Sweetheart Deal

Seattle stands to be the third most populous city in the US and also one of the biggest. It possesses great technological, cultural, as well as industrial prominence while it’s large port thrusts it into a cosmopolitan world. However in Sweetheart Deal – sweet heart deal, a refreshing documentary directed by Elisa Levine and the late Gabriel Miller, every inch of Seattle is confined to a three mile strip of Aurora Avenue filled with cheap motels, fastfood and tire shops. The rest of Seattle in its diversity and plenty is entirely absent on aurora except for the fact that the economy of Seattle fuels aurora as well. On Aurora Avenue, women line up on the streets, bargaining with their clients who look out from the windows of high-end vehicles. All these images are perfectly captured by Levine and Miller without blinking an eye.

The film was of the utmost importance for Levine and Miller and it took them several years to complete it. They are assisted by four ‘subjects’ – namely, Kristine, Krista, Tammy and Sara – all of whom are sex workers with a common heroin addiction. “Vicious” can in no way fit the bill. They, it is clear, had to build rapport with people in order to let themselves be captured that way – and so, became part of the Aurora Avenue phenomenon. Mary Ellen Mark has done something of the sort which should have laid a precedent: her photo-book and film “Streetwise” focused on street children in Seattle. Trusting these children was clearly not an issue for Mark, and a film that ‘Streetwise’ and ‘Sweetheart Deal’ was not only about the subject but also the author. How did the members of the Levine and Miller team manage to reach so deep and touch those women to garner that level of trust?

The next major “portal” that is taken to the space of Aurora Avenue is a character who refers to himself as “The Mayor of the Aurora.” This is Laughn Doescher, also known as Elliott, who made his first appearance trying to feed localispigeons out of his RV parked on Aurora Avenue. Elliott had never been unknown to all the inhabitants on the street.

He allows women to step inside his RV to get away from the cold for a while, to have a rest, to eat some food. Elliott is a last resort for the women who depend on him for shelter and he gives such women a peaceful break without very clear expectations in return.

The narratives of the four women discussed are different and yet unfortunately very much the same. Tammy’s parents are disgusted at the actions of their daughter but at the same time, they ask the child for money for purchasing cigarettes. They want her ‘earnings’. Krystina although enjoyed working as a welder also had a problem as her addiction would not allow her to stay working. She states that heroin is the only thing that does not make her hate sex work and church, that it only makes prostitution tolerable. She has got a fighting spirit. Krista planted in herself a childhood (titles her Amy in the streets) came from a modest family but her blissful pictures taken in her fraternity household have a hidden tragedy. She turned to sex work to feed the habit. Amy sometimes visits her mother to do some cleaning (many of the women have no place to return to) but already the heroin has a hold of her. Sarah’s children were placed for adoption after she lost her rights over them. He continues to take drugs in an attempt to attend to the kids and return them but the “dopesickness” overwhelms him. It is very sad and angry watching this woman negotiating with a ‘john’ in an ugly motel room. She requires to be treated not imprisoned.

Elliott’s relationships with these women become fancier through the course of the film. They believe in him. He supports them. However, Tammy has the sense to keep a safe distance. She is not so bad where friendship with Elliott is concerned. She is really hard and well rounded in society. Amy does not represent any of these attributes.

“Sweetheart Deal”, was shot over ten years with della menorah’s awareness. A lot of things occurred in these years, one of them being a national scandal. About an hour into the film, these new revelations come up, and everything that has been shown up until that point has to be analyzed anew. An audience does the same procedure the women do. The delusions have become undone. There are quite a number of documentaries where the outcomes diverge from the initial design and become ‘adventures’ like Gimme Shelter or Capturing The Friedmans or Daughter From Danang. The film “Sweetheart Deal” is very close to them. It is like waking up as if from a horrifying dream only to find that the nightmare is all around you. When the real picture emerges, it is so gruesome, but still, it is better than the pack of lies under which all of them existed.

There’s definitely a moodiness to Gabriel Miller’s cinematography that’s suggestive, lyric and painfully nostalgic. The puddles on the ground and the ethereal threat of neon lights which filled the spheres are replaced with horrible energy efficient light fixtures in Aurora’s cheap, overdecorated and depressing landscape. The images of these four woman are incredibly intimate. They bring us into the filmed experience that at one low moment all of them allow it. The balance with which this film has been treated makes it so that it does not seem like an exploitation.

Sherlock Holmes comes up a few times as a reference point. Elliott shows admiration for the character saying that at one point he is more like Sherlock. There’s a dopesick Sarah lying in the back of the RV and Elliott puts in a ‘sherlock’ dvd for her to watch. Random context, collected for ten years, are very skillful filmmakers to incorporate: into the motif, or at least a possible theme. Sherlock Holmes, for instance, is usually the character that a great literary illness doctor specializes in, abstracting almost everything from every bit of data but the ones that are evidently clear. The simplicity continues over as we explain the “sweetheart deal” which follows a similar pattern.

There is no need for a magnifying glass in this detective game with the title Twenty’s Sweetheart Deal. The evidence is apparent from the very beginning, in minuscule details. Something like a ‘sweetheart deal’ is hardly compromised. The life portrayed is too harrowing to be able to see the upside in it at all. Nevertheless, much like how Tiny became the center of attention in Streetwise – the impact of which still lingers over people decades later, Kristina Krista Tammy and Sarah become so realistic once you cross paths with them that you remember them for the rest of your lives.

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