The Guest Room

Richard Chapman—husband, father, businessman—hosts a bachelor party in his Westchester, NY, home for his younger brother. Two strippers are hired to provide the expected entertainment, until the debauchery ends abruptly when the girls murder their bodyguards and flee. Richard keeps from his wife not only the truth about the violence but also what he did in the guest room with Alexandra, one of the girls now on the run. While Richard's respectable, stalwart life collapses, Alexandra's heinous existence as a sex slave is revealed. "Tell me, who's worse?" she demands. "Someone who sells a young girl or someone who buys her?" Bohjalian's 18th title eschews easy judgments. The narration alternates between Mozhan Marno's rich, mature voice and Grace Experience's youthful, breathy one. Experience, who is Bohjalian's daughter, imbues Alexandra's not-quite-fluent English with a vague, not-quite-definable Eastern European accent that underscores her desperate, drifting situation.