That was my initial reaction to it also, Stilly. I had no desire to ever watch such a movie. But then I finally did. She wasn't hitchhiking, she was hooking...at the lowest and grittiest level of sheer survival, having led a life from the earliest age which did not really prepare her to do anything else. Yeah, you bet it's a grim subject.

I couldn't imagine it (beautiful actresses wanting to alter themselves and then the submerge into such a character) before seeing the movie. I can imagine it now.

People who still have anything much in life are terrified of street people, and of life when it sinks that low. I think the reason why that is, they are deeply afraid inside that it could happen to them someday...that they could be that alone, that hopeless, that much of an outcast, that undesirable, that powerless in the face of the general society around them.

Take away someone's money. All of it. Take away their dignity.   Take away their family. Take away their friends. Take away their ability and basic knowledge of even how to get a normal job. Take away their home and all their possessions. Put them in the middle of this society, dropped at the edge of a street or a highway. It happens to people, people who might have been fine, given better circumstances. Make them realize that there is probably nothing left they could possibly do that would change their situation...except, oh, well...they could still do something to make it even worse, in the next five minutes or the next half hour. And tomorrow? More of the same. Until you die.

That's terrifying.

It could happen to anyone under the right circumstances. This movie was powerful because it made you feel for the people in it. Both the perpetrators and (in most cases) the victims. It's a simply heartbreaking movie.