In 2013, Silvio Berlusconi was found guilty of having sex with an underage prostitute and of abusing his powers to orchestrate a cover up. In the 1970s, Sweden faced a very similar situation involving multiple government officials and a stable of young girls pimped out by Madam Dagmar Glans. It’s this story of sleaze and the exploitation of girls in the care system that forms the backbone of Mikael Marcimain’s epic thriller. Fourteen-year-old Iris (newcomer Sofia Karemyr) is our way into the story, as she progresses from giggling through a topless dance to reluctantly having sex for a paying audience at a party.
Winning awards at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012, reviews of ‘Call Girl’ from that festival almost without exception compared it to ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’. You can see why: shot by the same cinematographer and directed by that film’s second-unit director, it shares the same obsessive eye for period detail and slow-build tension. It also could have worked well as a television miniseries, but this isn’t to take anything away from what is an engaging study of institutionalised abuse.