Girl Model
Directed by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin

This film is a public relations piece for organized criminal rackets operating internationally between Russia and the Far East. I couldn’t quite figure out why this film was made. It is a pack of lies and misrepresentations from beginning to end. The proof of this is in the film itself and I will point it out to you, although the film tries to cast itself as something benign or even benevolent. But it is such a thin veneer that it is almost laughable. This is quite obviously sordid and sinister. The more I think about it, the darker and more frightening it becomes. It’s very curious what was motivating these filmmakers?
It starts out in Siberia, of all places. Really. The opening scene reminded me of a factory farm where animals are kept in large warehouse-like facilities by the hundreds and thousands being raised in close quarters for slaughter. Except these are girls between the ages of about twelve and fifteen. Their bikini covered bodies are examined one after another in a seemingly endless assembly line, supposedly in search of some ideal of feminine beauty that will be successful as a model in Japan.
From the outset it is apparent that this is a scam. If these self appointed mavens of the fashion world actually knew as much as they claim about the tastes of Japanese publishers and fashion, then there would be successful models to interview to validate the success of their judgments. But there are none. The only adult woman interviewed in the film is Ashley Sabin, one of the filmmakers, who seems deeply ambivalent about the modeling business and who said that “no one hated the modeling business more than me.” Yet she is now a recruiter for the enterprise she once despised, and she doesn’t seem all too pleased with herself.
I spent the first part of the film wondering why this was taking place in Siberia? I’m not sure I’ve got it right, but Siberia is an out of the way place and far from media attention and public scrutiny. The population is mostly rural and economically challenged, let’s say, and probably unsophisticated in their knowledge of the outside world. It’s a good place to do something if you want to keep a low profile, and there is evidently a large pool of naive young girls who dream of escaping to a better life in a faraway place.
Tigran, the supposed owner of the modeling agency that recruits the Russian girls and transports them to Japan, is the paradigm of a smooth talking con man. He presents himself as something a few pegs below sainthood, giving these deprived girls from rural Siberia an opportunity to live an exciting life as a model in Japan and make a lot of money for their struggling families. But this avatar of his organization is belied on a number of counts, and once quite explicitly and threateningly, which I found very interesting, and a bold intimation of what he is really all about.
First of all, there are no successful models who can be held up as examples of what he has can accomplish for a girl. A successful agent should have successful clients as examples of his capabilities and judgment, and he doesn’t have any.
Second, the contract that the girls have to sign with his agency is actually quoted on screen, and promises them two jobs in Japan and $8000. But Madlen and Nadya, the two girls followed in the film, do not get jobs, and leave Japan at least $2000 in debt — to him. So they are lied to and swindled.
Third, the contract specifies that the terms of the contract can be changed from day to day at the will of the agency. This means that there is no contract, that they are basically working at his whim.
Fourth, once the girls are in Japan, he does not attend to them in any way. They are passed on to Japanese handlers who send them on an series of fruitless auditions that amount to nothing. If they do get work or their photos are used they are not paid for it, and he does not see to it that they are paid. There is not one named Japanese advertising agency, publication, retail business, or fashion house in the whole film that has used the models that this agency has represented. Not a single one.
Fifth, and most tellingly, he relates how some young girls can be”difficult” — Lord knows — and in order to subdue them, he takes them on an outing to the morgue, so they can see the dead bodies of other young girls like themselves. Purportedly, this is to discourage the girls from drug use. Tigran vouches for its powerful effectiveness. But if this is such an effective technique for keeping young girls off of drugs, maybe we should start doing it here. Why hasn’t anyone here ever thought of this after so long in the War on Drugs? Maybe we should start organizing field trips for young girls to visit morgues to see the bodies of other young girls who died from drug abuse? Perhaps this film does have one valuable insight to offer that can turn young girls’ lives around.
Actually, this is intimidation of the most heavy handed sort. This is to let the girls know that ‘you belong to us, now. We own you. And you’d better do as we tell you, or this is your destiny.’ It is a very stark choice, and he means it. He admits that he used to be in the military and that he has killed a lot of people. He wants you to know that he is capable and experienced at killing people. The military part of it is questionable, but that this man is a killer I have no doubt. This guy is intimidating and very dangerous.
The scam works like this. Girls from poor families in rural Russia are recruited by the Russian Mafia. Ashley works as a scout and a recruiter. She gives the whole process its veneer of benign legitimacy. The modeling tryouts and the search for the ideal of feminine beauty are a sham. What they are really looking for, and Tigran says this explicitly, are girls from disadvantaged backgrounds whose families have financial problems. He said they check the girls out very carefully in terms of their background and their family circumstances. They are looking for girls with the right kind of vulnerabilities. Once they find an appropriate candidate, they are lured to Japan or Taiwan or somewhere else in the Far East with the promise of a successful modeling career. But, of course, that does not happen. The girls are treated miserably. They barely have enough to eat. They have to call home to get money to live on. They get no jobs. If their photos are used, they are not paid for it. After a while they are sent home several thousand dollars in debt to the “modeling agency.”
The one instance where Nadya’s photo does appear in a magazine is one where her face is covered. Why is her face covered? With her face covered she can’t be identified. We don’t even know for sure if that is her. This “modeling agency” does not want anyone to see their models in a magazine. They don’t want anyone to know she was ever in Japan. They want her to remain invisible. What about all the tryouts and photo shoots? Some of the photos may indeed be used, but probably not in Japan, and she will never be paid for any of them. What is really going on here?
This is recruitment for prostitution. Prostitution is where the real money is, not modeling. The criminal gangs have no illusions. Very few girls can make much money modeling, but almost any girl can make substantial money as a prostitute, even a gray mouse like Nadya. That is what this is about, ladies and gentlemen. This is why the film you saw doesn’t make sense, and why it is hard for me to figure out why it was even made in the first place. The “modeling agency” is just an elaborate cover. The few thousand dollars spent on sending the girl to Japan and shaking her loose from her family is the mob’s initial investment, their startup cost. Once the girl is working as a prostitute, she will make that back and more in a very short time.
The first step is to get the girl deeply in debt. Once she is in debt beyond her ability to repay, and her family unable to bail her out, the Russian Mafia makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Remember that girl you saw in the morgue? We spent a lot of money to send you to Japan or Taiwan on those fruitless modeling tryouts, and we expect to get that money back. You’ve proven that you can’t make money as a model. But we’ve got a surefire way for you to make money, but it is not exactly modeling. It’s a little different, but another way of selling your body.
Ashley Sabin talks a little bit in the latter part of the film about prostitution and how some girls who fail as models end up going that route. She points out how some countries and cultures do not stigmatize prostitution and claims it is a perfectly legitimate way to earn a living. She professes not to know anything about that aspect of the modeling business, and claims she has nothing to do with it herself. This is very likely a lie, along with the lie we see her relating in the next few moments to Russian parents of prospective recruits that the girls from her modeling agency never return to Russia with debt, when we have just seen two girls from her agency return to Russia with thousands of dollars in debt. So her credibility is zero, and her capability and effectiveness at deception is documented right before our eyes. Some women are able to deal their way out of the prostitution aspect of the business by acting as recruiters of younger girls. That could be Ashley’s story, but she speaks very good English and appears to be an American. Perhaps those qualities were seen as more valuable assets that working as a prostitute. Ashley is a bit of a puzzle, but there is clearly much that she is not telling. It is evident that she has very mixed feelings, but apparently strong survival instincts, and she is doing what she has to do.
At the very end of the film in a textual postscript, we are told that Nadya went back to Japan the following year — a rather surprising turnaround given her disagreeable experience the first time — but maybe not, if you consider the scenario that I have painted. We are told that she failed again to achieve success as a model and racked up still more debt and was sent on to Taiwan and China and other places in the Far East. It did not tell us what she was doing or how she was living, but I think we can make a pretty good surmise that she is not making money as a model. If she was, then they would have pictures and publications and advertisements to show us as evidence of her success. But rest assured, she probably is making money, and more than she could ever make modeling, but she is not getting much of it. Ask Tigran where the money goes.
This film leaves me puzzling. Not about what is going on. That is very clear. But what were the filmmakers intentions in making this film? What were they trying to accomplish? They didn’t seem to be able to bring themselves to tell the real story, so they concocted something half-assed, that intimated very obliquely what was going on, and left a lot of loose ends dangling nonsensically, but they never really pursued the matter in any depth. And they promoted a viewpoint that they knew very well was a lie. They seem afraid to really follow this where it is leading, — understandable, actually — but if they don’t want to tell the story, why make the film at all? The people and organizations running this operation don’t usually like to be the subjects of documentary films. Why would a guy like Tigran appear in this film? Did he really think that people would buy his tale about his having such a good heart and doing this for the good of the girls, when the film plainly shows that that could not be true in any shape or form? Did they delude themselves into thinking that this would encourage young girls around the world to want to become models? I don’t get it. It must have something to do with the relationship between Ashley and Tigran. I think she is very much afraid of him. I can’t even speculate about it.

TheatreWorks presents…..

TIME STANDS STILL

By

Donald Margulies

Directed by Leslie Martinson

Starring Rebecca Dines, Mark Anderson Phillips, Rolf Saxon & Sarah Moser

Your only obligation in any lifetime

Is to be true to yourself. Richard Bach

This is a play about finding out who you really are.  “One of our greatest contemporary dramatists, Donald Margulies is a photojournalist of our lives, gifted with an extraordinary lens,” says TheatreWorks Artistic Director Robert Kelly.

 

In Time Stands Still, Margulies examines the conflict we all face in sorting out what we need to be as human beings and what we are actually doing with our lives.  Although the plot weaves many themes together, that of career, marriage, human need, and our obligation to ourselves and to society, the real story is the juxtaposition of the relationships of the two couples we see on stage.  The play “is very much about the choices and compromises we all make —in love, in work, and particular to this play, in war,” says Margulies.  “Ethical struggles touch on all aspects of life.”

 

Rebecca Dines is Sarah, a photojournalist severely injured while recording the terror and slaughter in Iraq.  We meet her when her lover Jamie (Mark Anderson Phillips) is bringing her home, her leg and arm broken and her body a mass of abrasions.  Jamie went to a hospital in Germany to be with her as she fought for her life. “I had my fifteen minutes (to become famous)  and I spent it unconscious,” she says.

 

As she contemplates her career and her need to return to it, she says, “I live off the suffering of strangers.”

 

Jamie counters with, “You help them in ways you can’t see,” but the truth is that Sarah gets far more out being in the midst of combat than a good picture.  She is addicted to the danger and feeds off the violence she captures on film. ‘The women and men who put themselves in unimaginable situations to capture images and stories…aren’t simply doing it for the public good,” says Margulies.  “Their courage is immense, to be sure, but there is an unmistakable kind of thirst for it as well.”

 

Jamie is a journalist who uses words to record the horrors that Sarah photographs and he has had enough.  “We don’t have to do this,” he says to Sarah.  “I don’t want to watch children die.  I want to watch them live.”

 

The other couple, Richard (Rolf Saxon) and Mandy (Sarah Moser) is in direct contrast to the tormented, battle scarred main characters.  Richard was once Sarah’s lover and employer. He is a newsmagazine photo editor and is instrumental in creating a book of Sarah’s photographs and Jamie’s writing.  He is wildly in love with Mandy now, an idealistic, sweet and unbelievably naïve girl thrust into the company of three hard core liberal realists. Richard excuses her:  “She’s young,” he says but Sarah delivers the final put down”  “There’s young and there’s embryonic.” she says.

 

Mandy has brought Sarah balloons to cheer her up and she says, “Balloons have an amazing way of making you feel better.”

 

Although Sarah and Jamie obviously dismiss her as inconsequential, Sarah Moser has given Mandy an exquisite persona the audience cannot help but love.  She is obviously sincere and there is a great deal of wisdom in her innocence.  She tells Sarah, “I’m an event planner,” and Sarah counters with, “I’m in events, too.  War.”

 

But Mandy refuses to be diminished and she will not allow Sarah to believe her relationship with an older man is nothing but fluff and sex.    “People think I am Richard’s mid-life crisis,” she tells Sarah.  “But it is not that at all.  Whatever it was that brought us together was what brought us together.”

 

As the action develops, we see that Richard and Mandy have built a solid foundation for their relationship.  It is a fulfilling one for them both without a hint of the sugar-daddy/bimbo infatuation Jamie and Sarah assume created it.   All the actors in this production are superb, but I have to say that Moser and Saxon mesmerized me with the veracity of their portrayals.  They brought their characters to compassionate life without a hint of sentimentality.  When Mandy hears that Sarah has photographed a dying child, she is horrified that the older woman did nothing to help or save that child.  She cannot believe the cynicism she feels in the room and she says, “There is so much beauty in the world.  I wish you’d let yourself feel the joy.  Otherwise what’s the point?”

 

It might sound trite and it might be a one dimensional sentiment said by anyone else, but Moser transforms her lines into exquisite observations on what we can make of our destiny if we really want to see its potential instead of its loss.  When the two get married and have a baby, Mandy decides to stay home to rear it.  “You make me feel like less of a woman because I want to stay home with my baby,” she tells Sarah and Sarah understands, but she knows that isn’t the life she would choose.

 

It is when Jamie sees how happy Richard is that he realizes that he and Sarah can have something more…the happiness, the positive future, the security…if they will but give it a chance.  He tells Sarah: “When a couple has been together as long as we have and has seen what we’ve seen and done what we’ve done, it’s time to call it what it is…a marriage.”

 

And Sarah agrees…in principle…but she doesn’t take into consideration her own drive to do the thing she loves and her thirst for the action that feeds her. She justifies the value of her work to herself and to Mark.   “If it wasn’t for people like me, the ones with the cameras, who would know?  Who would care?“ she says and he realizes then that the relationship isn’t going to work for him.  “You need drama more than you need me,” he says.

 

Until the final scene, the plot held together beautifully for me.  Leslie Martinson is a superb director and the movement of the characters, the use of silence, the juxtaposition of innocence and cynicism is masterful.  Erik Flatmo’s scenic designs are right on the mark, accenting the action and never detracting from the action on stage.  Both Dines and Phillips occasionally had trouble convincing me that they were the real thing and often their chemistry on stage disturbed rather than enhanced the action. There was falseness to their intensity that did not ring true.   It was Saxon and Moser who charmed me throughout.  That said, the entire production is a must see on every level.  The script is truly wonderful and TheatreWorks has given us a theatrical masterpiece, beautifully presented. As an ensemble production, it excels.

 

Time Stands Still continues through Sept. 16. at the  Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets  $23-$73.

More information: (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org.