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Directed by Matthew Kyle Levine, Miss Freelance is a dark look into the life of one young woman who finds herself immersed in the company of all kinds of men throughout New York. Levine creates a sort of distance between the viewer and the protagonist, Carly (Maddy Murphy) which is very disorienting. However, through the cinematography, we are also aligned with Carly’s surroundings in a more immersive way which adds to the unease. By foregrounding the environment in this way, a sense of danger pervades every scene. The hand held camera shots are dizzying perhaps reflecting how lost and unable to escape Carly feels in this world.
As she indulges the strange fetishes of her clients, we get the sense that this isn’t where Carly wants to be. Her emotional detachment is aching and the only time we see her really connecting with anything is old films she watches when she isn’t working. The film has excellent sound editing, with ambient noises such as the tube station and noises you don’t typically notice, like breathing and the brushing of hair, taking extreme precedence. This is starkly contrasted by the fact we rarely hear Carly speak. She is almost silent through the entire film.
As Miss Freelance progresses, it becomes harder to determine which relationships are real; which encounters are for fun and which ones are for work. For example we meet Ben (Tim Cox) interrogating Carly, asking her where she has been. Placed within the previous context, it could be that Ben is role playing with Carly, pretending to be angry. Cox delivers his monologue to her and still we get no response from the protagonist, to suggest who this man really is. Cox captures the escalating anger of an unhinged man and, as Carly finally confirms that Ben was a real relationship, we begin to see what may have pushed her into prostitution in the first place. She sees the relationship with these unknown men as mutual and her relationship with Ben as fake. Finally getting to hear Carly speak her mind is a revelation and adds a new dimension to the film that can only be understood with repeat viewing.
The impact of Ben on her life is obviously quite profound as she struggles to find validation in all the wrong places. A relationship that seems to be real and good is perhaps just as disappointing and somewhat dangerous as her relationship with Ben. Her final line ‘Can you tell me how pretty you think I am’ reflects a systematically engrained insecurity and an inherent vulnerability that is perhaps being exploited.
Miss Freelance is a darkly mysterious film with a lot of room for interpretation. The performance of Maddy Murphy was extraordinary, elevated further by the supporting cast of characters including Tim Cox and Keith Boratko.