Object #69 - Knickerbocker Glory - Mona Lisa (1986)

Dir. Neil Jordan 

Like a striptease, Mona Lisa becomes more and more debauch as it goes. Despite opening with our protagonist, George (Bob Hoskins) having a midday domestic with his wife and child in a London suburb, the seedy life-of-crime George falls back into, following his prison release, remains at arm's length. He's tasked with ferrying high-class prostitute, Simone (Cathy Tyson) from place to place, from fancy hotels, to secluded estates. 

The opener immediately characterises George, as he, fresh from prison, attempts to mend a clearly fraught relationship with his wife (Pauline Melville), flowers in hand. Well, in fact, his main purpose seems more to be reuniting with his daughter, Jeannie (Zoe Nathenson). We can assume he's been in prison for a while, as she's now a teenager, not the child he once knew (if indeed he knew her at all pre-prison). He desperately tries to halt any calling of his wife, clinging to a brief moment with Jeannie. When it all goes tits up, and descends into a shouting match - wife telling him to leave, Jeannie begging her Mum to let him speak - George reacts like you'd expect, throwing the flowers at the door, tipping bins over, and grappling with passers-by who attempt to get him to leave. George is a thuggish man, like many we've seen before, unable to vent his emotions in any other way than violence. But, and this is the crucial part, he has a heart - Jeannie. 

Following this outburst of violence at the open, the film tones down into a drama presenting crime, rather than a crime-drama. The prostitution of Simone is done in upper-class environments, as classy a way to do prostitution as there can be, and behind closed doors. She goes about it business-like, with George being the one out of place, with his geezer attitude and mismatching clothes. Even when Simone gives him money for fancier clothes, he wastes it on gaudy, low-rent gangster threads. A great moment occurs where she avoids his escorting her out of the hotel, distancing herself from his apparent lower-classness and crime background, jokingly stating that he might as well have a gold necklace, to which he pulls one out from under his shirt. They're an odd couple. He offhandedly throws racist jokes at her, expecting her to go along, but again, crucially, when she doesn't, he falls back on it being his nature, and the way he was raised, a damn sight better than say calling her a bitch or some other worse response.

The two fall into what could be called love. They have a connection, in that odd-couple way, where their bickering and poles-apart natures (in background, gender, skin colour, and culture) are what makes them a great fit. So much so, that George agrees, against his better nature, to help Simone track down another prostitute friend of hers, Cathy (Kate Hardie). Cathy, when Simone last saw her, was being abused by her pimp (Clarke Peters), and despite Simone manging to escape him and move higher up the crime ladder, Cathy's fate hangs over her. 

Here, we descend into the more debauch nature of the London criminal world. George uses old contacts to find any prostitute with the name Cathy who matches his description. He finds himself in really seedy, crappy backroom bars where drugged up women dance naked to disinterested punters. The women gaze, dead-eyed at the tatty environments they find themselves. Upstairs rooms lead off from a bare hallway, the building used for one purpose, cheap sex. In one of these rooms he finds a prostitute called Cathy, but she isn't blonde, and isn't who he's looking for. 

May (Sammi Davis), as we later find out her true name, is fifteen years old. Even the contact of George, a bouncer for bars like this, remarks "I didn't know you liked 'em that young, George.". It's uncomfortable ground, and the air of abuse, both physical and sexual, is heavy. May has a black eye from her pimp, who we discover is the same pimp from Simone's past, and she pleads with George to tell him that she was 'good'. She's out of it, due in part to her age, with Davis fantastically conveying this young girl who's used to this abuse, knowing no better. 

As the film goes on, we learn that George's boss (Michael Caine) has a hand in the pimp ring. We dive in more depth to street prostitution and street pimps. When introduced to the real Cathy, she is naked, pushed up against a one-way window by an old man, likely a politician, herself far too young, and on the table lie needles, likely heroin. The window into the seedy crime world is even opened on Simone, as we see her revealed at first in polaroids, then in a porno which George tracks down, and finally in fetish-wear, handcuffed, pleasing a client. 

The message of the film, that the commodifying and abuse of women and young girls is a societal problem oft-overlooked, is best encapsulated when George attempts to gather information from May. He sees her on the street after their first meeting, midday, and attempts to talk to her again. She refuses to answer his questions, trying to hail down customers. George strong-arms her, again using aggression as his primary method of solving situations. She goes along with him on the condition that he pays her for time she could be spent with clients. 

They enter a standard London cafe, George gripping her arm lightly. He orders a tea for himself, and when asked, May orders a Knickerbocker Glory ice-cream. They sit, as George awkwardly attempts to start a conversation. He asks her if she likes ice-cream, to which May responds that it's all she can eat anymore. George is put off, the ramifications of the life of abuse May and prostitutes like her go through flash across Hoskins' face, masterfully understated acting, where we understand his thoughts without having access to them. May can't eat solid foods due to the amount of drugs she's taken, or been forced to take. After he gains information from her, including her real name, she exclaims "Oh, my ice cream!". George goes over to the counter, then brings it to the table, and as he returns, he swears, hastily dropping the tea and ice-cream on a table. 

The camera cuts outside to May getting in a car with a customer, as George crosses the road, shouting after her "What about your ice-cream?". It's a surprising moment, and one that really struck me, despite the later scenes of worse circumstance, as this one truly sold the child-like aspect of the prostitutes. May is excited for ice-cream, like a child younger than her years, as if she hasn't aged mentally at all due to being forced, for how long we don't know (and don't really want to know), to please strangers. 

It's the suddenness that really gets me. May goes from happily exclaiming for ice-cream, to soliciting a random car-bound stranger for sex in barely a minute. From child to under-the-thumb, wilful embrace of sexual abuse. She's so locked into this life that time off to briefly enjoy child-like pleasure, is ditched to pleasure someone else, to keep her pimp happy, and to earn her way. George we know would have paid, it's in his character, a funny thing really as earlier in the film, waiting for Simone, he tips a tip-jar of coins into his pocket. He's the type of guy to do that, but he not enough of a crook to disenfranchise what he sees as a child, in poor circumstances. 

Later in the film, [SPOILER WARNING] it's revealed that the reason Simone wanted to find Cathy was that they were in love. George was a means to and end, his and Simone's chemistry used for her to get her true love out of trouble. George, being not only a man of his time, but also a man who so clearly needs some connection to anchor him and to escape from the drudgery of his criminal life, is enraged that he's been duped. We see it in Hoskins' face as the truth becomes clear. The pier scene where he confronts Simone about his feelings sell not only in words, but in wordless expression the rage at being made a fool of, being made a fool of by a woman, being made a fool of by a black woman, having his emotions twisted by a (in his own words) 'dyke', emotions twisted by someone who he thought he had a connection with. 

Hoskins and Tyson are electric throughout the film, and this is the climax of their relationship, as it's torn apart. We empathise with both, and indeed, sympathise with both - he's estranged from his wife and daughter, she's unable to be with and to care for the woman she loves, a gem in the world of shit that she and the trapped women of London find themselves. He hates and loves her, and his journey into the seedy sex rings of London has matured him to the plight of women in the city, and yet a betrayal is a betrayal so it still hurts. We end the film with him finding connection with a young girl untainted by the seedy world of crime, Jeannie, his daughter, who he can bond with on a deeper level thanks to the journey he went through in Mona Lisa, and find a connection which can repair the damage that the world left on him.