See Me Feel Me Take Me

The film opens with a young drifter – Nadine – arriving in Los Angeles on a bus and checking into a $5.00 hotel room. She immediately hits the street to turn tricks, but is soon accosted by an older hooker who warns her off the block. Through it all, our heroine exhibits the detachment of a native pariah: she chews gum without a thought while servicing her johns, and barely manages to react with indifference when her competitors threaten her with physical harm. Secretly, however, Nadine wishes to leave the life and periodically sneaks off to a Catholic church where she confesses her misery to a priest. Driven more by plot convention than the critical weight of the story, Nadine finally finds relief from her life of self-exploitation; but there is little to suggest that her anomie can be wished away by a good-looking boyfriend and a kiss on the beach. Much more than a morality play about a reformed hooker, See Me, Feel Me is really about the numbing emptiness of modern life, about people who wait while knowing at the same time that nothing is ever going to happen, a study in unsublimated futility.