Our very own Matt Fagerholm raved about Elisa Levine & Gabriel Miller’s “Sweetheart Deal” out of the BendFilm Festival, and I can join in that praise now that I’ve seen it out of Slamdance. This is a captivating doc about people on the fringe of society, women who turn to someone in their time of greatest need only to find themselves betrayed yet again. Levine & Miller assemble their film in a way that produces great empathy for these women, even as they face yet another unimaginable betrayal. They capture cycles of addiction and abuse, reminding viewers how hard it is to escape these situations, especially when even the people who offer help are vicious sociopaths.
“Sweetheart Deal” chronicles four sex workers in the city of Seattle, Washington. A man who refers to himself as the mayor of Aurora, the avenue also known as Highway 99, offers them help when they need it, letting them crash in his trailer, and even helping one catch a client who kidnapped and raped her. He supports them when they have literally no one else, even taking one of the women out on her birthday. He’s the only one who remembered it. And yet there’s something unsettling about his behavior early on as Levine & Miller catch him in possessive and even jealous moments. “Sweetheart Deal” becomes surprisingly suspenseful as we come to care for these people and hope they can find the road to happiness, one step at a time.
One of the big winners at Slamdance this year was the inventive documentary hybrid feature “Starring Jerry as Himself,” which took home the Audience Award for Doc, the Grand Jury prize in that category, and even an acting award for Jerry Hsu, who, you guessed it, played himself. The story that unfolds in Lawrence Chen’s clever film isn’t that thrilling on the surface, but the filmmaker had a brilliant idea during production and gets Jerry Hsu to play himself in a series of extended recreations, detailing what happened to him when he thought he might suddenly be the subject of an international event.