Women in Trouble

Women in Trouble
Promotional film poster
Directed by	Sebastian Gutierrez
Produced by	Sebastian Gutierrez
Written by	Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring	Carla Gugino Connie Britton Emmanuelle Chriqui Marley Shelton Elizabeth Berkley Cameron Richardson Adrianne Palicki Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Music by	Robyn Hitchcock
Cinematography	Cale Finot
Edited by	Lisa Bromwell Michelle Tesoro
Distributed by	Screen Media Films, Myriad Pictures (International)
Release date	November 13, 2009 (2009-11-13)
Running time	92 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$50,000

Women in Trouble is a 2009 American comedy film, written and directed by Sebastián Gutiérrez, and starring a cast consisting of Carla Gugino, Adrianne Palicki, Marley Shelton, Cameron Richardson, Connie Britton and Emmanuelle Chriqui. It was shot in 10 days for $50,000.

Plot

The film focuses on six women in Los Angeles as their lives become intertwined in the course of 24 hours.

Porn star Elektra Luxx (Carla Gugino) discovers she is pregnant. Leaving her doctor's office, she gets stuck in an elevator with Doris (Connie Britton), sister to Addy (Caitlin Keats). Addy has recently started taking her daughter, Charlotte, to see her therapist, Maxine (Sarah Clarke) (While secretly using the visit to sleep with the therapist's husband, upon choosing to follow her therapist's advice to "live with more risk."). Upon finding out about her husband's secret during a therapy session with Charlotte, Maxine rushes out and gets into her car. While backing out, she hits Holly Rocket (Adrianne Palicki), adult film star. Holly and Bambi (Emmanuelle Chriqui) were running to safety after a session with one of Bambi's clients is interrupted. Meanwhile, flight attendant Cora (Marley Shelton) finds herself the object of rock star Nick Chapel's (Josh Brolin) affection on a flight to his band's upcoming show.

Cast

• Carla Gugino as Elektra Luxx, adult film superstar
• Adrianne Palicki as Holly Rocket, adult film actress
• Connie Britton as Doris, Addy's sister
• Caitlin Keats as Addy Hunter, Doris' sister
• Isabella Gutierrez as Charlotte, 13-year-old girl, daughter of Doris
• Marley Shelton as Cora, flight attendant
• Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon as Maggie, flight attendant
• Josh Brolin as Nick Chapel, rock star (drummer and songwriter) who's a passenger on the airplane
• Emmanuelle Chriqui as Bambi, call girl (?)
• Rya Kihlstedt as Rita, barmaid at Ruby's Caribbean, the lesbian bar, & Darby's roommate
• Cameron Richardson as Darby, masseuse and Rita's roommate
• Sarah Clarke as Maxine McPherson, therapist
• Simon Baker as Travis McPherson, the therapist's husband
• Xander Berkeley as Mr. Frost, one of the people talking to the therapist
• Elizabeth Berkley as Tracy, one of the people talking to the therapist
• Lauren Katz as Tara, one of the people talking to the therapist
• Paul Cassell as a Jay, one of the people talking to the therapist
• Ermahn Ospina as El Capitan, character in the porn movie
• Greg Lauren as fireman
• Samantha Shelton as singer at Ruby's Caribbean (bar)
• Antonio Graña as Jimbo, the mafioso muscle
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Bert Rodriguez, "sex blogger"

Production and sequel

The film was directed by Sebastian Gutierrez. Production began and ended in Los Angeles. The film premiered at the 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival.^[1] The film opened in the United States on November 13, 2009. A sequel, Elektra Luxx, was released on March 11, 2011. Gutierrez returns as the writer-director, and the cast includes Carla Gugino, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Timothy Olyphant, Julianne Moore and Justin Kirk. Gutierrez is planning on making a third installment, tentatively titled Women in Ecstasy^[2] which was initially planned to be released in 2012.

Critical reception

Women in Trouble polarized critics. On the positive side, Joe Leydon of Daily Variety gave it a rave review, calling it "A compulsively watchable mix of high camp and grand passions, soap opera and softcore sex. Very much in the deliriously lewd style of Pedro Almodóvar—who has co-written unproduced scripts with Gutierrez, and gets a shout-out in the closing credits—this exuberantly uninhibited indie has the anything-goes spirit of something tossed off in a single burst of collaborative energy." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times assessed: "Women in Trouble has sleeper written all over it and a sequel is already in the works." Kyle Smith of the New York Post said "Unlikely accidents, shared secrets and zany twists combine to whip up a pleasing froth.". John DeFore writing for The Hollywood Reporter praised the direction: "Gutierrez's script can not supply female characters as believable as Almodovar's, but in the director's chair he gives his cast room to compensate with funny, self-aware performances".

At the other end of the spectrum, Melissa Anderson writing for Village Voice said "blue material mixes awkwardly with sob stories". And Manohla Dargis of The New York Times was not amused, complaining that "The amateurish production values might be pardoned if the clichés—the hard-core porn star with the soft heart, the therapist who needs to heal herself—inside the poorly lighted, badly shot images were not so absurd and often insulting".

References

External links

• Women in Trouble on IMDb
• Elektra Luxx's blog entry about Women in Trouble, from a promotional blog for Women in Trouble and related films