The locally produced documentary Sweetheart Deal contains many messages, but if we unfairly reduce it to one, then it is this: The real crime of sex work is its criminalization. And this message has renewed force in light of the present conservative city council. On Sept 19, eight of the nine members of the council voted to impose a “Stay Out of Area Prostitution (SOAP) zone, and the reinstatement of the City’s prostitution loitering laws.”  

If we lived in a city that didn't, again and again, force sex work into the underworld, then the key and terrible development in the documentary would have never happened. This, evidently, was a lesson that City Council Member Joy Hollingsworth, who voted to reimpose the regressive and dangerous SOAP policy, didn’t catch during her trip to Amsterdam. There, sex work is not criminalized and, therefore, not pushed to the margins of its society. In Seattle, which was once progressive and moving in the direction of Amsterdam, it is. 

The four women Sweetheart Deal follows (Kristine, Krista, Tammy, Sara—all addicted to heroin, all working Aurora Avenue during the previous decade) had, because of the criminalization of sex work, no place to go for their immediate needs. The only place they could rest, shoot up, or decompress after a "bad date" was the RV of a man known as the Mayor of Aurora (Laughn Elliott Doescher).

One of the sex workers, Tammy, is aware that something is not right about Doescher, but she says this feeling of distrust is a form of protection. She has adapted to a world where trust is far more costly than distrust. Tammy knows nothing good could come out of his charity. In the world she lives in, there's nothing that's offered for nothing. The other sex workers clearly give Doescher (an aging hippie by appearance and manner) a considerable amount of trust, which is why, when his exploitative crimes against the women are made public, their first reaction is disbelief. It's nothing but exploitation upon exploitation all the way down this street. This is why SOAP 2.0 will never work. Like the first SOAP, which got its start in 1990’s, it doesn’t establish public safety in the universal sense but attracts criminals like Doescher. 

What we also see in Sweetheart Deal is a 21st-century capitalist city, which the directors (Elisa Levine and the late Gabriel Miller) represent as dark, gloomy, and haunted. And there is Aurora, with its cheap motels, bad traffic, seemingly endless nights, and the rain. But the thing to keep in mind while watching this heavy masterpiece of Pacific Northwest noir—which has the gloom of the third season of The Killing and the rawness of Streetwise—is that it was filmed between 2011 and 2017; The underworld it describes is right in the middle of a Seattle that's transitioning from an outpost to a major tech hub in the global economy. 

As billions are being poured into luxury apartments, hotels, and office towers, Kristine, Krista, Tammy, and Sara work Aurora for scratch that comes with great risks to life and limb. In one scene, the camera rises from the avenue, and we see the corporate towers of downtown in the distance. Is this what the Mayor of Seattle means by "One Seattle"? It’s certainly one that does everything it can to make sex work (a legitimate occupation) more and more dangerous. Our mayor and city council make monsters, such as the one in Sweetheart Deal, as real as rain.

Sweetheart Deal opens at SIFF Film Center Friday, September 27. Charles Mudede will host a Q&A with filmmakers Eliza Levine, Brittany Kaplan, and Peggy Case after Friday’s 7 pm show, and Kathy Fennessy will host a Q&A with the same panel after Saturday’s 1:45 pm show.