This week, Netflix began airing Hot Girls Wanted, a Rashida Jones-produced porn doc that seeks to document a group of young amateur performers as they take their first steps in the porn industry.
The five girls — all of them under 20 and new to the business — are recruited via Craiglist ads by Miami-based production company Hussie Models, and lured in with promises of fast, easy cash. The documentary originally premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival to largely positive reception. Technically, Hot Girls Wanted is well-executed: interviews are interspersed with production segments which play along with the movie’s message. The message being that the amateur porn industry is bleak and that these girls are blatantly being exploited. Yet the movie also wants us to think that, ultimately, it was the girls’ choice to do porn and even shows them enjoying the financial rewards that come with every job. This ends up being at once positive and confusing, as it muddles questions about the movie’s true intentions — and tone.
Hot Girls Wanted attempts to tread the fine line between unbiased reporting and commentary. It is clear that the directors, Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, have a firm stance on the subject and do not condone the nature of the business they are documenting. Under the premise of unbiased reporting, however, the movie never paints a clear picture as to what it is the audience should be taking from it. Such restraint is welcome in documentary reporting, yet in Hot Girls Wanted, it comes off as forced.
To its credit, the movie is fairly forthright in establishing the context: this is an unglamorous world with none of the on-camera energy, both on and off-set.
Jones herself has claimed she does not condone the way the industry treats these girls, and went as far as implying the wrongs are to be blamed on the industry. While eye-opening in many respects (the movie highlights the alarming fact that for many of these girls, their careers have a 3-month lifespan), setting out to produce a documentary with an objective voice while mincing a firm agenda, is misguided at best, preposterous at worst.
Hot Girls Wanted is available on Netflix.