It’s obvious to me that the documentary Happy Endings was a labor of love on the part of director/producer Tara Hurley and editor Nick Marcoux. According to the commentary on the disk, Hurley and Marcoux labored for four years to produce this baby. But no matter how much parents love their offspring that doesn’t mean that their offspring is beautiful. And just like in real life, I’ve seen my share of unattractive babies.
Happy Endings focuses on the Korean massage parlors in Providence, Rhode Island. This documentary makes it very clear that anyone who lives in Rhode Island knows that these parlors are fronts for prostitution. The core of Happy Endings is a series of interviews with the mayor of Providence, the women who work in the parlors, a customer, some legislators, lawyers, social activists, and two employees of the local newspaper. Because of a loophole in the state's laws, prostitution is illegal outside a building or on the street but is legal inside a building. The obvious presence of legal prostitution has polarized the citizens of Rhode Island.
The first problem I have with Happy Endings is the audio. The music overpowers and mixes with the speech of the people being interviewed so it’s very difficult to hear what these people are saying. I couldn’t turn up the volume because then the music volume would also go up. So, I had to listen and listen again to catch some of the words. And there were times when there was no music, and the sound levels were too low. So, I spent a lot of my viewing time turning the volume up and down. And at a couple of points in the documentary, my stereo switched modes from mono to stereo and then back again. It appears that Timothy O’Keefe was responsible for the sound, but I don’t know how much blame he deserves if he had to work with bad recordings to begin with.
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Article comments
1 - Jason
I saw this film six months ago, so my memory's not so fresh. But I remember I only stayed in the theater because a friend invited me to watch it.
It bored the hell out of me. 30 minutes could easily have been edited out, as the camera frequently allowed the subjects to ramble too long. It's nice that Hurley allows the women to speak of their hardships and how they feel about their jobs, that they're not hurting anybody, etc. But that's as deep as it gets. There's very little detailed debate about how decriminalizing prostitution could be beneficial for women- "these women aren't hurting anybody" is as deep as it gets. You know, I think pot should be legal, but if I want to sway somebody's opinion I will not merely say "It's my body, I can smoke what I want!". I would engage discussion on the prison overcrowding, dangers of creating a black market, stigma, etc.
Yes, there's a sad double standard in that the women are more harshly punished than the male customers. But simply pointing that out isn't exactly revolutionary. If Tara Hurley returns to the subject of prostitution in the future, hopefully the results will be better as I think this is an important issue.