Stripped

"Two of the five women interviewed die before the film is finished," proclaims the video box for this stripper documentary, thus making it perhaps the first in its genre to be sold using snuff-film appeal as well as the usual T&A. However, both deaths are off-camera and one is really more of a disappearance, if we want to get technical. Neither is particularly endemic to stripping, which, as countless documentaries that have gone before have shown, can make young women a lot of money, cost them some self-esteem while paradoxically giving them a degree of control over men, and isn't generally thought of as erotic by those who do it. Still, as with Holocaust documentaries, there'll always be a market for new films in this genre if well-told, especially when the director herself is curious about the profession and joins in -- her attempt to railroad her roommate into doing same is the best scene in the movie. There are no stunning revelations herein, but then, that's not why you're going to go see it, is it?