We Really Like Her: Working Girls

We Really Like Her! is a Toronto-based monthly screening series at the Revue Cinema . It is co-programmed and hosted by Emily Gagne and Danita Steinberg and aims to celebrate and highlight women in film. Our column, coinciding with our monthly screening, will give That Shelf readers a little insight into the thought process behind our film choices — from their cultural significance to why we love them.

This month, we are celebrating Lizzie Borden ’s groundbreaking Working Girls (1986) .

EMILY GAGNE
@emilygagne

Sex work has been portrayed countless times over the course of cinematic history. But many times it is done punishingly, dooming those doing the work to tragic fates. Thankfully, that is not the case in Working Girls , which we are so excited to bring to the Revue Cinema audience this November.

Lizzie Borden’s most excellent 1986 feature film is not to be confused with the 1988 Mike Nichols rom-com Working Girl . Unlike that much more mainstream take on greed and growth, Working Girls is not about a naive woman navigating high-rise office life. Rather, it is about Molly (Louise Smith), a queer woman who works at a brothel to make ends meet.

Equal parts an honest portrayal of an unfairly maligned industry and a cutting commentary on capitalism, Working Girls takes you through a day at Molly’s workplace. Yes, you spend some time in bed with the clientele, but much of the movie is about the employees that work with them, including their struggles to get paid fairly and treated with respect by their boss (a woman, by the way). It is a film that anyone who has ever worked for someone else can relate to, so much so that many people think it is a documentary when it is in fact narrative fiction.

I have had the pleasure of speaking with Lizzie about making this film a few times, most recently to record a message to play before our screening. This is clearly a film that comes straight from her heart, having herself been a working girl. That’s why we’ll be donating proceeds from this screening to Maggie’s Toronto (“one of the nation’s oldest sex worker justice organizations”) and giving away a signed copy of Lizzie’s recently released Whorephobia: Strippers on Art, Work and Life . I hope that this screening will both entertain and enlighten folks, while helping others feel seen.

DANITA STEINBERG
@danitasteinberg

Obviously, our whole deal is celebrating women in film and there’s just no one worth celebrating more than the incomparable, genuine, brilliant Lizzie Borden. Bringing one of her films to the Revue Cinema has been a long time coming and we are beyond honoured to be able to present the 4K restoration of Working Girls .

A rebel from an early age, she decided to change her name from Linda to Lizzie when she was 11-years-old, after she became fascinated with the infamous alleged murderer. Personally, that’s really all I need to know about someone to get me curious about them! But I mention that because Borden’s rebellious spirit is the essence of her films, a driving force present in every frame.

We’ve programmed our fair share of rule-breaking women: Susan Seidelman, Penelope Spheeris, Gillian Armstrong, Penny Marshall, Cindy Sherman, to name a few. And Lizzie Borden fits right in. An independent filmmaker who was at the forefront of feminist counter-culture, Borden experiments with film form, narrative structure, and ideas of visual pleasure, often blending the worlds of documentary, performance art, and fiction.

As we work to redefine the film canon with our screening series, Borden’s filmography deserves to be at the centre of that conversation. She has been at the vanguard of cinema, in both her style and subject matter, since her first feature, Regrouping, in 1976. And even many decades later, her films, including Working Girls , still surprise and impress everyone who is fortunate enough to discover them.

Plus, our screening is on Emily’s birthday so you are pretty much obligated to come.