Call Girl is a determinedly downbeat chronicle of surveillance and skullduggery inspired by real events β essentially a s Swedish version of the Profumo affair, with more hidden mics and telephoto lenses. The ostensible heroine is year-old Iris Sofia Karemyr , a runaway sent to a juvenile centre but soon recruited by Dagmar Glans Pernilla August , a madame with more than her share of little black books.
Dagmar seems to cater to grey-haired, grey-faced, paunchy politicians who like to keep their socks on while consorting with underage girls. There is a massive and extremely complex scandal brewing, with women in huge hats keeping secret meetings at consulates, and a byzantine process of surveillance, investigation and cross-investigation, not to mention quashed investigations.
Copper John Sandberg Simon J Berger is intent on exposing the whole rotten business even though he keeps being roughed up, apparently at the behest of the people who assigned him to the job. The film comprehensively dismantles the myth of Sweden at that period as an idyllic haven of sexual enlightenment. In both dressing and social atmosphere, Call Girl evokes the s vividly and realistically, rather than staging the period as a perennial saucy cheese-and-pineapple party, as Michael Winterbottom did in his recent The Look of Love.
Otherwise, the film is oddly familiar, with its shots of stenographers in booths transcribing secret conversations, and repeated inserts of reel-to-reel tapes. You can find our Community Guidelines in full here. Want to discuss real-world problems, be involved in the most engaging discussions and hear from the journalists? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
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