Tonight I happened to catch a movie and it reminded me how I want to highlight some movies that have characters who are youth in the sex trade. Chop Shop is an independent film that won several major film festival awards.
Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.”
During the movie, it’s revealed that his sister has sex for money. Her brother Ale’s reaction is amazingly layered and compassionate. She handles herself in a such a realistic and complicated way too. This movie stands out for me as presenting a complex picture of a young person in the sex trade without resorting to a mandatory downward spiral, an improbable rescue, or even to resolve everything neatly at the end.
