SEDONA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 REVIEW! Rising out of Macedonia is the rhapsody in black that is The Business of Pleasure, a dark thriller written and directed by international auteur Goce Cvetanovski. Eleni (Slagana Vujosevik) is a journalist working with the police to try to take down a sex trafficking ring. The women who are forced into sex work are all branded on the wrist in the same way, so everyone knows whose property they are. She tries to convince Natasha (Eleni Dekidis), who was trafficked, to reveal details about who runs the ring. However, she keeps her mouth shut, instead blowing Eleni a kiss.
Meanwhile, Ion (Musa Isufi) and Achilles (Ismail Kasumi) are driving the streets, looking for sex workers with the brand. The two threaten a woman who refuses to talk, which gets them in trouble. They offer large amounts of cash to save their skins and get a meeting with a seller of women. This gets Ion and Achilles a meeting with the sinister pimp Igor (Damjan Cvetanovski), who is much more than they bargained for.
Right off from the impeccably stylized opening credits, The Business of Pleasure shows itself to be a stainless steel picture. Its look has a spark to it that is slick and gritty. Such superb style fully fleshes out the cold-blooded horror of human trafficking. The shot compositions are as poignant and potent as a Weegee crime photograph. While the material may be hard to watch, the film is a sight to behold. Cvetanovski also lifts us off the planet’s face with some stupendous otherworldly lighting. The human flesh market headquarters looks like another dimension. If you wanted to know what the inside of the Phantom Zone may have looked like, check this out. Everything shines like chrome, heightening the juxtaposition between visuals and the sewer depths traversed by the plot.
“…a journalist working with the police to try to take down a sex trafficking ring.”
All glamour devours itself with the endless nightmare fangs of the sex slave industry portrayed. Nowhere is this more vivid than when the trafficked women are decked out in finery with their heads hanging down like broken puppets. That Cvetanovski expands his condemnation of this underworld into the realm of politics shows the talons of the social beast being stood up against. In terms of forced sex labor movies, this one is one of the ugliest despite how beautiful it looks.
There’s a more methodical second act that is bookended by the terrifying thrill machines of the first and third acts. There are a lot of flashbacks that reveal many layers at work beneath the surface. This slows down the pace for a spell, which works for the audience’s benefit with a needed variety of tone. The non-stop pounding calamity would start bringing things to a first-person shooter level of reaction of desensitization in some and a stroke in others. The necessary second act also expands the thematic depths, so that once the hammer comes down again, we are in a whole new arena.
Special mention needs to be made for actor Damjan Cvetanovski, who plays the vicious Igor. Someone needs to recruit him as a superhero villain, as he is horrifying. His mix of menace and unseemliness has a diabolical tinge that I haven’t seen anyone have recently. The Business of Pleasure is a superior dive into cinematic darkness, signaling that something major is going down in Macedonia that the world won’t be able to ignore.
"…something major is going down in Macedonia that the world won't be able to ignore."
