United States

• The Prostitute

This Rose blossoms only at night...
This motion picture strives to destroy the image of a tough, callous "working girl" by showing that she, like all of us, has her own share of emotions. Rose Kilpatrick (Sandra Dempsey) is a prostitute. She is twenty-seven years old, but she has lived enough for two. We follow her through the course of one day's procession of clients, and we watch as her humanity is slowly and unwaveringly stripped away. She is first visited by the loud and coarse truck driver, for whom Rose's contempt is clearly recognizable - except to him. Another regular client, a self -impressed college student, brings a "first- timer" to Rose's shabby apartment, and for once Rose good-naturedly enjoys the uneasiness of her young romantic. The sense of humour, coupled with her sincere affection for two additional visitors, serve to further the image of Rose Kilpatrick as a human being. She would like to have the woman client as a friend but must, in her own mind, preserve the lines of demarcation constructed between prostitute and paying customer. And the middle-aged man, pretending that she is the youthful resurrection of his dead wife, brings out the element of genuine compassion. This visit, one in a long repetitive line, is far and away more destructive for her than the purely physical demands of the masochist and sadist also on her client list.