Rebecca de Mornay stars as call girl Lana in 'Risky Business' (1983).

In sex worker romcoms, you’re supposed to be scandalized at the sordidness - but in a fun way. At the same time, there’s little of the sober moralizing and doling out of consequences you see in more dramatic treatments like “Pleasure” (2021) or “Hustlers” (2019). Rows of women in revealing outfits are panned across various levels of nudity are hinted at, or more. Sex worker romcoms also, as a rule, revel in the risqué, using the presence of sex workers as an excuse to ramp up the titillation beyond what you get in most boy-meets-girl screen encounters. But in general, these sex worker romcoms see sex workers as sympathetic figures whose emotional and sexual labor is valuable and even transformative - even as the movies scurry to “save” sex workers from sex work by the end of the run time.

The formula varies somewhat - Richard Gere’s Edward isn’t exactly nice in “Pretty Woman,” and Rebecca De Mornay’s Lana isn’t fleshed out enough as a character to have much of an arc in “Risky Business” (1983). Percy, for his part, is the nice guy who teaches the worldly woman the virtues of commitment, self-respect and (at least some degree of) sexual temperance. Percy is repressed, nervous and scared of women and of life. Maddie serves as his Manic Pixie “Call Girl,” drawing him out of his shell by encouraging him not just to flirt and kiss, but to drink wine, skinny dip and play piano in public. Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stoc/ Stock Photo Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) sits beside Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) in 'Pretty Woman' (1990). If you’re familiar with past sex worker romcoms like Billy Wilder’s “Irma La Douce” (1963), Ron Howard’s “Night Shift” (1982) or the blockbuster “Pretty Woman” (1990), you probably have a good sense of where the movie goes from there. And by “dating,” they mean having sex with him. Laird and Allison offer Maddie a Buick Regal in return for “dating” Percy. Their 19-year-old son Percy (Andrew Barth Feldman) is neurotic, shy and very inexperienced. Without the car, she can’t work and is likely to lose her house.ĭesperate, Maddie answers a Craigslist posting from concerned parents Laird (Matthew Broderick) and Allison (Laura Benanti). Maddie’s car is repossessed when she’s unable to pay her taxes. But her hometown, the Long Island summer beach community of Montauk, New York, is gentrifying.

Maddie (Lawrence) is a 32-year-old Uber driver who starts the movie never having been paid for sex. The Jennifer Lawrence vehicle from Sony Pictures revolves around a sex worker who, like the film, doesn’t want to admit what she’s doing.

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