User Reviews

Known in Holland as Gebroken Spiegels, Broken Mirrors is split between two stories. In one, Diane (Lineke Ripman) and Dora (Henriette Tol) are Amsterdam brothel workers at the Happy House Club who begin to tire of their lives. And in the other, a housewife named Bea (Edda Barends) is kidnapped by one of the johns and is slowly starved to death while her captor takes photographic evidence.

Directed and written by Marleen Gorris (A Question of Silence), this film sets forth the belief that all women are captives of men, whether that means that the patriarchy that they've created or quite literally the situation in the second story.

Dora explains to Diane that these men rent their bodies, not who they are, so they don't need to give them anything more than seconds of fumbling sex. They're supported by the lady of the house, Ellen (Coby Stunnenberg), who allows them to turn down customers and gives them a line to call for help.

Bea is in a strikingly similar situation and knows that she's going to die. But if she does, she will only give the killer brief moments and none of the emotion that he craves. He only has her body as well, not who she is.

It's also worth noting that we see the women's faces, learn their emotions and become sympathetic to them, but never really see many of the men, even the killer. They are near-silent and almost always anonymous.

I only saw this film once, about ten years ago on SBS television in Australia, and while I can't remember many specific plot details, I can remember the impact it had on me. Its loose narrative describes the day to day life of prostitutes working in a brothel, while every so often exploring the movements of a male serial killer who seems to delight in watching women waste away. Like I said, the specifics are a bit fuzzy in my mind, but I do recall he takes photos of a woman tied to a bed over a long period of time, sticking them on a wall, forming a document of her disintegration. It sounds like another film that treats the torture of women as entertainment, but it's far from it. "Species 2" is a far more offensive piece of work (and obviously left such a bad taste in my mouth that I've recalled it here!). Gorris is clearly an intelligent film maker who is not afraid to tackle problematic ideas and concepts, and both this film and her earlier work "A Question of Silence" are essential viewing as examples of feminist cinema - as well as being provocative and intriguing works, regardless of labels.

Marleen Gorris' follow-up to A Question of Silence is very much its companion piece, foregrounding some of the same actors, extending the earlier film's questioning of the basic structures and assumptions of work and family, carrying a similar sense of a text that can't be contained by prevailing patriarchal norms and expectations. Broken Mirrors is the more structurally ambitious film, with two intertwining narrative tracks, one located primarily within a brothel, the other tracking a serial kidnapper and killer of women: the juxtaposition of two such cinematically loaded milieus can seem strained at times, the point about contrasting forms of female powerlessness all too obvious even before one of the characters voices it explicitly near the end, but never to the point of negating the film's overall strengths. It's at its strongest when observing workplace activity, the women putting up with a wide spectrum of male behaviour (the "nice" clients as tediously transparent as the aggressors), the two strongest characters gradually forming an axis which ultimately allows them to stand up to a transgressing client and then to walk out (it's telling that the image of a woman holding a gun and firing into one of the titular mirrors made it onto the film's poster, given how wildly unrepresentative it is of the overall substance). But it's also plain that their stand, no matter how momentarily brave, leaves the broader picture essentially unaltered (as soon as they leave, the remaining women return to their usual time-killing activities), and while one of the two says she won't ever be back, the other can go no further than "not if it's up to me." The law, in the form of police or otherwise, is entirely absent: as in A Question of Silence, one leaves the film with a sense of a female discourse from which men are excluded by their very nature.