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Trust Weighted
Very Good
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66Trust Points
Wick's Review
Summary - Very Good 3.5 click to collapse contents
Like most industries, the modeling industry has a supply chain. Girl Model documents one tawdry strand, originating in the tiny villages of Siberia and ending in the glitzy salons of Japan.
It’s not a pretty picture. It is full of pretty girls, many shockingly young. The Japanese like pubescent models for their advertising images, so Western scouts and Russian agencies procure such children from Siberia, where blue-eyed beauties seemingly grow on trees, desperate to help their impoverished families.
Irony abounds throughout this revealing documentary. For one, a tiny slip of a girl wears a pink shirt declaring “Femininity, Be Proud,” even as she’s being exploited for her femininity. For another, a former model’s body bizarrely betrays her, juxtaposing the beauty and beastliness that occupy a single being.
There’s lots of money to be made, of course. A former model who’s now a scout occasionally repairs to her multimillion dollar Connecticut house like it’s a Fortress of Solitude. She and the older models know what they’re doing is wrong, given that the new girls are mere children. Thus they all spout self-justifying rationales, most of it insipid.
The documentary focuses on one aspiring girl model, a 12 year old blonde named Nadya. When her and her family’s payday-dreams fail to come true, Girl Model becomes a veritable Hoop Dreams in heels.