Hustlers – $howgirls

Scam movie with a political and economical background starring Jennifer Lopez, Cardi B and Lizzo, sensually twerking in undress, weird isn’t it ? Not for filmmaker Lorene Scafaria.

Huge hit on the other side of the Atlantic, Hustlers was expected to attract : a cast as pop, sexy and talented as Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, Lizzo, Cardi B, and Lili Reinhart, titillating outfits, higly sensual dances/performances and as odor of sulfur. But Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’s director and screenwriter doesn’t settle for the appeal. She has a subtext more sulfurous than any pole dance act. And when you know Adam McKay is the producer, after The Big Short and Vice, you quickly figure out what it is about.

Inspired by a true story reported by Jessica Pressler in the New York Magazine in 2015, Hustlers focuses on Dorothy (Constance Wu), a young stripper living with her grandmother in a poor New York neighborhood. In 2007, she starts working at the Moves Club in Manhattan, meeting with Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), an experienced mentor who coaches her to dance and to learn the business’ strings in order to earn as much as she can. But 2008’s crisis arrives and main customers, traders, desert clubs. So they think about a scam to keep their way of life.

Keeping their way of life, but not only. Because Hustlers is not about greedy women, it is about social revenge. Like in The Big Short, the film opens fire on a group of people we can find in Wall Street, who didn’t blink an eye when playing other’s money to sink occidental world into one of the worst economic crisis it ever witnessed. If the direction, sometimes bold, is often timorous, the film is a saving scream. Moral and immoral at the same time, honest and criminal, above and beyond, these women claim a discreet but stirring rebellion. Even if they are no models, Dorothy, Ramona and the others urges us to strike back. A Scam for a scam. Replaying chain food with baser instincts as weapons. If the feel-good movie tone seems out of place, it is actually aligned with these women polite smiles hiding their scars so no one can abuse them.