During the ’80s if anyone mentioned visiting Holland, you always had to ask if they visited the notorious red-light district. Your parents associated the country with tulips, cheese and wood shoes. But your friends knew it was the place that had legalized pot and prostitution. Most of us only heard about the goings on at the red-light district from unreliable sources since they got too high to remember. Broken Mirrors (Gebroken Spiegels in Dutch) had writer-director Marleen Gorris (Antonia’s Line) delve into a brothel, the kind of men that visited and the women who worked inside.
While we’re expecting a movie about prostitution, the first thing we see is a mysterious man dumping a dead woman’s body. The killer’s meticulous way of operating makes us suspect he’s a serial killer and not ready to give up his ways. The women show up for work at the Happy House brothel. A few are happy by to be there. Most of the ladies are exceptions including one gets into the game because her man is taking drugs and is worthless as a money earner. The clientele drops by for a few drinks before taking a girl upstairs. The men are rather brutish in their approach since they see this all as transactional. They put the money down and demand what they want for the next hour or less. They are brutish and feel the women have no need to complain as long as they pay up. They seem to have the same mindset as when the serial killer picks out another woman to abduct and imprison inside his torture chamber. There are not much happy times for the women working in the brothel. Many of the men insist on no protection even if a few women have picked up diseases in the past. A bigger danger is the audience suspecting the serial killer is a regular at the Happy House. Every woman in the film is at risk from any man that rings the doorbell.
About a decade back, I did a series of interviews with Dennis Hof, the owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch that was featured on HBO’s Cathouse. After a few phone interviews, he invited me to his legal brothel to hang out. It was revelatory spending time inside and seeing how the business worked. While there, I heard from working women about guys they’d encounter at other brothels that tried to do messed up stuff. The workers (including Bailey Paige) told me that they were under no obligation to hook up with a customer that picked them out of the Bunny line. A man still had to have manners, the proper attitude and enough space on their credit card to get taken back to the bedrooms. But as I was told by several of the women, other employment opportunities made saying “No” a bad idea. The Happy House is a place where they ladies couldn’t afford to say no.
Marleen Gorris gives us a brothel where the many of the men that visit aren’t on their best behavior. It doesn’t help that the place seems like a wild bar where the customers get drunk and pull out their wallets to hook up. There are violent incidents and not just in the room that caters to such activities. The security guard doesn’t make the place feel safe. Can he take out a serial killer? What’s interesting is that Marleen Gorris could have just made a film about the women working in the brothel. The serial killer adds suspense to the film. Viewers are guessing which of the people visiting the Happy House is the killer and will one of the ladies be his next victim. Gorris negotiates the tricky nature of the plot. She merges these two elements to create depth and tension and not merely an exploitation mash up. Broken Mirrors is meant for the art house and not the grindhouse.
Broken Mirrors is the second movie of Cult Epics retrospective Blu-ray reissue of the three feature films Gorris made before winning the Best Foreign Film for Antonia’s Line. Her first film A Question of Silence came out in June. The Last Island will arrive in October.
The video is 1.66:1. The 4K transfer off the original camera negative is colorful and gives the details of both the brothel and the torture chamber. The Audio is Dutch LPCM 2.0 mono. There’s also a DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono mix of the Dutch soundtrack. The movie is subtitled in English.
Audio Commentary by Peter Verstraten is an assistant professor who has written two volumes on Dutch Fiction Film. He talks about how when he was working on his book, he wasn’t able to find a good copy of the film. He is delighted to see this new transfer. He gets into comparing the film with Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion which also came out around the same time.
Interview with Margo St. James (8:17) is from a Dutch TV show about the forming of a union by hookers. St. James is from America so her interview is in English. She mentions that while the women aren’t arrested for doing their business, they are no protected or represented in government. She talks about her work with COYOTE. There is a discussion of Marleen Gorris’ Broken Mirrors at the end.
Promotional Gallery contains posters, lobby cards and behind the scenes photos. The US release poster has First Run Features as the distributor and only lists A Question of Silence so the film must have played art houses in major cities back around 1984.
Cult Epics Trailers includes A Question of Silence, Angst, Death Laid An Egg, Obsessions and My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga & Julie.
Cult Epics presents Broken Mirrors. Directed by Marleen Gorris. Screenplay by Marleen Gorris. Starring Lineke Rijxman, Henriëtte Tol, Edda Barends, Coby Stunnenberg, Carla Hardy, Marijke Veugelers and Arline Renfurm. Running Time: 110 minutes. Rating: Not Rated. Release Date: August 15, 2023.
