Women In Trouble

Women In Trouble is an interesting little film by Sebastian Gutierrez. It’s the interwoven tale of several groups of women having a bad day in the Los Angeles area; porn star Elektra Luxx finds out she’s pregnant and ends up stuck in an elevator during a heat wave with Doris who is struggling with her sister Addy & niece Charlotte; Charlotte is seeing her mother’s shrink and Addy is seeing the shrink’s husband; two prostitutes run into the distraught shrink and help her get drunk to drown her sorrows; meanwhile in the air two flight attendants deal with Nick Chapel – Elektra’s boyfriend & a high profile rock star.

The obvious comparison here is to Perdo Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, but I don’t think this was Gutierrez’s full intention –his film may be more homage than American remake. While the cast of distraught female characters is there, and a bit of a quirky artistic flare, I do think that Gutierrez was trying to make a artistic statement about a day in the lives of these women in a difficult environment.

I’ve read a few reviews that based Women In Trouble for being a horrible depiction of women – hookers, porn stars, victims & dumb blondes. While I do agree that these women are all an extreme I didn’t find this offensive and I am a woman. To serve this film justice the characters in this film needed to be pretty extreme – otherwise it would have to be a serious drama like Far From Heaven or Revolutionary Road instead of being quirkily upbeat. Besides, if you’ve spent any time at all in LA – you’ve seen plenty of women like all of these women – even the naive shrink and too world-wise child.

All in all I enjoyed the quirky pace of this film. I’ll probably check out the sequel Elektra Luxx when it makes it’s way to me. Gutierrez painted a unique enough world that I would not mind visiting it again and finding out what happened to Elektra after the credits rolled.

Director & Writer: Sebastian Gutierrez
Elektra Luxx: Carla Gugino
Holly Rocket: Adrianne Palicki
Doris: Connie Britton
Addy: Caitlin Keats
Charlotte: Isabella Gutierrez
Travis McPherson: Simon Baker
Maxine McPherson: Sarah Clarke
Bambi: Emmanuelle Chriqui
Cora: Marley Shelton
Nick Chapel: Josh Brolin
Bert Rodriguez: Joseph Gordon-Levitt