THE CLIENT LIST dvd

After writing about the resurgence of the "hooker with the heart of gold" trend in entertainment, I felt it behooved me to watch The Client List, the Lifetime television movie with this motif that will soon be a Lifetime television series. This movie did nothing to change my opinion that three of the worst words in entertainment are "Lifetime original movie."

The Client List has a setup of financial disaster. Samantha Horton (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and husband Rex (Teddy Sears) seem like a perfect family: She was a beauty pageant winner, he was a college football star, and they live in Texas and have three terrific kids. Unfortunately, Samantha was laid off as a physical therapist, Rex' leg injury keeps him from getting work in construction, and neither of them can find work. One of their daughters needs braces, their son needs $100 to play flag football at school -- and the bank will foreclose on their house in a month.

Fortunately, Samantha gets a job at the Kind Touch Health Spa. Unfortunately, this is a massage parlor where the employees don't have formal training but do provide... full service to their male clients. Samantha is sickened at first by the work, but soon the money is pouring in (as the other employees say, "Beats the hell out of waitressing!") and Samantha is the most popular worker. But the job interferes with the family, drugs enter the picture, the law gets involved, and the titular "client list" refers to a very public release of Samantha's highest-profile clients in exchange for less jail time for prostitution.




The Client List may have been "inspired bya true story" but it's all over the place. Samantha may hate the job, but she loves providing for her family (not to mention the gifts she gets from her appreciative clients). There's good ol' Christian guilt (inspired by the dashboard angel on the car), but there's also self-righteous Christian judgment (and hypocrisy from the Minister who's also a client). The job plays havoc with Samantha's family life -- but that seems to be more from the long hours than the sexual activity. And the movie never fully addresses the fact that the "immoral" work more than pays the bills, while "regular" jobs are both hard to come by and wouldn't cover the middle-class lifestyle.

In terms of stars, The Client List has Jennifer Love Hewitt (who does decently, as the nice mom who happens to find success and money as a prostitute), Cybil Shepherd (as Samantha's sassy mom), and a lot of extras who have little to do. This is a pretty typical television movie, promising scandal and titillation but delivering mediocre performances and situations. I don't how the tv series will continue from the movie's wrap-up, but given the fairly weak movie I wouldn't expect too much.

(And dvd extras don't exist here: All you'll get are a few trailers and the option for subtitles.)

Overall grade: D+
Reviewed by James Lynch

The Return of the Pro with the Heart of Gold

Perhaps it's a sign of the economic times, or the return of the same fantasy for men and women (for different reasons), but the Lifetime Channel's expanding their movie The Client List into an ongoing series in April is the latest foray of the prostitute with the heart of gold. It's also the latest example of the glamourization of selling sex.

In the original The Client List, Samantha Horton (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is a loving wife and mother. But when she loses her job and her husband gets injured and can't work, it's up to her to prevent foreclosure on their house -- by working at the Kind Touch Health Spa, where the clients expect a lot more than just a massage. (This movie is not loved by licensed massage therapists hoping to shake the reputation that "massage therapy" is a euphemism for prostitution.) The series will continue Samantha's storyline, where the biggest threats aren't STDs, adultery, or sex with strangers, but rather an economy where her family might lose its home, law officials who could arrest her (and cost her her source of income), and the intersection between her life as a wife and mother -- and her life as someone with a client list.

This type of character is hardly new. The film Belle de Jour (1967) featured Catherine Deneuve as a housewife who became a daytime prostitute out of boredom. Julia Roberts really became famous with 1990's Pretty Woman, in which we're led to believe rich, handsome men who pick up call girls on the street give them unlimited shopping and emotional attachments. And Billie Piper followed her beloved role of Rose on Doctor Who with Secret Diary of a Call Girl, in which Belle is a smart, attractive, fully likeable woman balancing her life as a prostitute with her "normal" life and friends.

Without pre-judging the series The Client List, it does seem to be idealizing trading sex for money. In the current issue of Maxim, Jennifer Love Hewitt comments, ""We have a lot of really fun things in the series eye-candy wise for our audience... It's a lingerie-heavy show every episode, for my character in particular. It's not going to be your mother's Lifetime." This may be a step up from the old "woman in danger, and a system that only helps men" formula, it also seems to be sanitizing the world's oldest profession (besides farming).

While I don't have a problem with prostitution per se (as George Carlin beautifully put it, "Selling is legal, fucking is legal, how is selling fucking illegal? Why is it illegal to sell something it's perfectly legal to give away for free?"), it seems like a lot of these shows portray the encounters as with great-looking, basically nice guys instead of potentially dangerous or pretty creepy individuals. (On Secret Diary of a Call Girl Belle did have a system where the she could let her pimp know if a client was trouble at the start -- but how many pimps are really less concerned with money than with keeping their prostitutes in good shape?) And since some of these have the prostitute as a married woman, that adds in the adultery aspect as well: Is providing for the family worth cheating on the husband?

(Incidentally, some shows have madams/female pimps (like Lady Heather, to the left, from C.S.I.) that are always well educated, polite, sophisticated, and concerned first and foremost with the treatment of their women. I suspect that's idealized as well, as I'm not sure sisterhood trumps profit.)

Perhaps the return of this trend is a reflection of the economy, as women who can't find jobs can still provide for their family by selling themselves. (On Secret Diary of a Call Girl Belle didn't have a family; but that show was paired on Showtime with Weeds, about a mother turning to crime (selling pot) to support her family.) Perhaps it's a re-affirmation of the woman who's damn sexy, not just a wife and mother. And perhaps men are happily tuning in just for the "damn sexy" part of the shows -- or the famtasy that the beautiful woman isn't just after their money.

With the current concerns about the economy and controversy over contraception, turning The Client List may be a reflection of concerns -- or sensationalizing the selling of sex. It should prove interesting to see what directions the series takes.

Written by James Lynch