Trade of Innocents (2012)

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VERDICT: Despite the sometimes middling road it takes to invoke emotion, Trade of Innocents is made to inform, not to entertain, and should thus be critiqued with this in mind. It has many flaws, but many more subtle truths, poignant symbols, and heartbreaking realities. It's one of those that takes a little while to sink in before you may find yourself shedding tears over the world's injustice.

I'm back! Sorry for the wait. My computer is up and running now.

This week I am reviewing a film that has remained virtually unknown this year due to low budget. But it is very much worth the discussion. I think if I hadn't seen this movie I would have just gone back to my normal review of something mainstream. But I'm changing it up this time. It'll just be quite a bit shorter, because it's a shorter movie and I don't have a whole lot to say about it.

Written and directed by Christopher Bessette, Trade of Innocents tells a story of a married couple, Alex (Dermot Mulroney) and Claire (Mira Sorvino). Broken by the loss of their young daughter and wanting to fix the strain on their marriage, they go to Cambodia to try and rescue girls from the sex slave trade, becoming fixated on one particularly widespread offender (Trieu Tran).

My college was actually screening this movie when I saw it, and Christopher Bessette himself came to our screening (how cool is that, right?). We have to get a certain number of chapel credits throughout each semester and this screening was worth two credits. So of course a few of us went. I plopped down next to one of my girlfriends and the premiere got started.

It's a shocking movie from the start. It's not comfortable to sit through, at all. But it isn't supposed to be. The idea is to disturb you enough about a very real situation to make you feel prompted to do something about it. The first scene where Alex plays rock-paper-scissors with a young girl who automatically reaches to take off her clothes before he stops her plays pretty well on the theme of stolen innocence, and this thread continues throughout the rest of the film.

It is a little strickening to see this young girl start to unbutton her shirt almost immediately.

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The emotional subplot fell a little flat in my opinion, though it had its moments. It was certainly easy to see why both Alex and Claire quest to save these children; they themselves had their daughter kidnapped and killed when she was eight. It was saddening, certainly, and the writing isn't totally mediocre. Bits of light shine through the cracks in its dullness. But you don't have enough characterization to really care about these characters. Then again, they never ask you to. Because again, this movie was made to inform, not entertain.

They tried. Mulroney and Sorvino are decent actors. It's just that you aren't given enough time to care about them.

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On the informative side, you may be surprised how well this problem has managed to stay hidden in our exposed modern times. The figures presented are startling, and even more disturbing is the fact that they are presented to be entirely truthful. I would list the figures, but it's much more jolting to hear them yourself.

One thing that this movie was good at doing, especially for me and my friend (nameless for privacy's sake), who was sitting next to me, was making us feel revolted at the flagrant pedophilia the movie brings to light. The brutal and vile language used to describe the young virgin girls that the main customer, Adderly, wants for himself is enough to make your skin crawl (describing them as "fresh flowers"). I appreciated how unflinching the movie was in terms of its honesty, because that kept me from completely writing it off for its low-budget look and mediocre emotional subplot. 

This scene, as mentioned by the director, actually happened. It's easy to believe that it did, due to the way it makes your skin crawl and blood boil through every sickening minute.

Images Source: IMDb

I waited for about twenty minutes after the Q&A with the director had ended to speak to him. I had to tell him that I appreciated what he had done; the symbolism he used was striking and beautiful and I believe that was part of what disturbed me so much about the movie. My favorite motif was at the very end, when Adderly has not been given the girls he asked for. He packs his things and prepares to leave his hotel room, when he spies the white ribbon on the table that he periodically smells throughout the movie. He hesitates, then goes to the table, grabs it, and then leaves, becoming a lurking shadow.

A young man in the audience at the showing stood up at the Q&A and openly expressed his disappointment that Mr. Bessette had not resolved anything by the end of the movie. As a writer, screenwriter, and film enthusiast, I was a little angered by that comment. So, when I talked to Christopher Bessette, I told him that I flatly disagreed with that comment, that I liked that the issue was unresolved. Because it is unresolved. That kind of open ending leaves the audience wanting to do something about it. 

I gushed compliments in his face, utterly impressed and amazed with what God had done through him in this movie and how beautiful and brave the message was to me. 

He chuckled. "Well, bless your heart!"

Needless to say, my friend and I were both shaken emotionally by this movie for personal reasons. In the movie, Adderly asserts many times that he wants seven-year-old girls. After the movie was over and I went down to my friend's dorm (because if I didn't talk/cry about what we had just seen then I wouldn't sleep), she looked at me, her eyes rimmed with tears, and said "I was seven." My friend had been sexually assaulted at that age, and although she was never in any sort of sex slave trade, she looked haunted by the reminder of her own traumatic experience. Part of me was thinking about her and the other part of me was thinking about these poor girls in the movie and all over the world. Either way, the movie brought me to tears. And I'm a stone in movies. I rarely cry. It was a weird sort of relief, though, to know that I still could cry at movies. I figured then it must have had some kind of impact that touched me very deeply. Another reason why I can't write off this movie completely.       

If nothing else, see this movie for its symbolism and its brutal honesty. Because this movie does something special despite its mediocrity; it values its message more than its image.

GRADE: B 

RATING: N/A

Trade of Innocents (Trailer)

MORE INFORMATION:

Official Website

IMDb

Rotten Tomatoes