Best movies like Shanghai Belle

Based on a true story, a powerful study of the dysfunction and disorder in the police and criminal justice systems that allowed a wily psychopath to murder nearly 50 marginalised women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

A troubled woman on the edge of divorce returns home to her younger sister after years apart. But when her sister and brother-in-law betray her trust, she embarks on a vicious crusade of revenge.

This melodrama investigates the life of a sex worker, in a pseudo-documentary style.

When a young European woman assumes a false identity in 1920s Argentina, she gets more than she bargained for.

Upon taking her vows to become a nun, Sister Sarah is abused, brainwashed and also drugged into submission by the corrupt clergy. On the verge of her own death from a lethal dose of drugs, Sister Sarah receives a message from God telling her to take vengeance on all those who did wrong to her. Armed with God's will and an arsenal of big guns, she dispenses Judgment Day on her former tormentors. When the church hires the merciless motorcycle gang "Los Muertos" to track down and to kill her they soon realize that this sister is one bad mother.

A retelling of the biblical book of Hosea set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush of 1850.

A bourgeois couple, modern yet conventional. One night by accident, a young prostitute barges into their lives. Hounded down, beaten up, threatened, she will continue to struggle, with the help of a well off lady, first for her survival-her resurrection-then for her dignity and freedom. Stormy encounters for everyone involved.

Athens 1966. Dimitris, 13, unexpectedly loses his father. Seeing his pampered mother collapse, the boy gets carried away and decides to skip childhood in order to stand by her. When he feels ready, he has to claim his mother back from an up-and-coming star of the military regime. A brutal coming-of-age story, where Dimitris reacts in vengeance, changing thus the course of Greek history...

While traveling in Paris, author Henry Miller and his wife, June, meet Anais Nin, and sexual sparks fly as Nin starts an affair with the openly bisexual June. When June is forced to return to the U.S., she gives Nin her blessing to sleep with her husband. Then, when June returns to France, an unexpected, and sometimes contentious, threesome forms.

A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.

A young Southern débutante temporarily abandons her posh lifestyle and upcoming, semi-arranged marriage to have a lustful and erotic fling with a rugged drifter who works at a local carnival.

Girl Lost tackles the issue of underage prostitution as told through the eyes of a wayward teen. Groomed by her own mother to work in the underbelly of Los Angeles, the young girl struggles to survive in this dark world.

Happily engaged to her handsome fiance, Charles, Fanny is soon hit with one misfortune after another until she is forced to become a prostitute to survive. This is the story, with many erotic asides, of her struggle to regain her pride in herself and find happiness in life once again.

A woman embarks on a worldwide quest for sexual fulfillment, experimenting in the exotic jungles of Africa to the swinging beaches of California, no desire left unfulfilled.

An adolescent girl, living with her mother and her grandmother, will have her first sexual experiences in a heavy and excessive way.

Hattie, a New Orleans prostitute, meets a photographer named Bellocq at her brothel one night and, after he photographs her, he befriends her 12-year-old daughter, Violet. When Violet is brought on as a working girl by her mother's madam and Hattie skips town to get married, Violet quickly loses her innocence and focuses on reuniting with Bellocq. But a life with Bellocq is compromised for Violet after her mother returns to town.

In an early 20th century village, a painter with an unusual commission finds two pretty girls two model for him. The girls slowly come of age while exploring their sexuality and finding liberation in a repressed society.

Sex is why we're all here. Power. Love. Sex. We're all looking for something. Ten characters each of whose lust sends them on a journey of discovery - sometimes decadent - spearhead the narrative threads in this unconventional American melodrama. The smart characterizations are counterbalanced by intense performances. From the virginal young man to the bored housewife a temptress and a womanizer with a dark secret In Search of Sex dramatizes situations where good people looking for short term solutions find themselves in bad circumstances with long term consequences

Composed of three disturbingly sensual and terrifying short narratives, unified by the twin themes of sex and death.

Kitty and Stud are lovers. They enjoy a robust sex-life, which includes fellatio and light S&M, specifically, Stud belt-whipping Kitty. Three women come over for a party and Stud services them, one after the other.

A haunting erotic fairytale about Lucy, a young University student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of beauty and desire.

Four young teenage girls are betrayed by a supposed "friend" and sold to a perverted nightclub owner who ties them up, whips them and then forces them into prostitution.

Clermont-Ferrand, central France. Médéric meets and falls in love with middle-aged sex worker Isadora, who is married. When the city center is the scene of a terrorist attack, Selim, a young, homeless guy, provokes a wave of paranoia by taking refuge in Médéric's building. Sympathizing with Selim, crazy about Isadora, Mederic's life suddenly turns into a mess.

Sonia, a girl from St Petersburg, decides to seek a better life in western Europe. She first gets a job at a car dealer in Germany. But she is suddenly kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. She will be dragged from country to country and resistance will only bring her misery and humiliation.

John heads to Paris hoping to meet his ex from the first movie, but instead ends up with her former friend, Lea.

A sexually unfulfilled housewife begins working in a high class brothel and starts a mutually obsessive relationship with a creepy regular customer.

Death in Love is a psychosexual-thriller about a love affair between a Jewish woman and a doctor overseeing human experimentation at a Nazi German concentration camp, and the impact this has on her sons' lives in the 1990s.

A mute Russian girl infiltrates Toronto's underground sex trade to avenge the death of her sister.

Craving that girl she was never able to replace and seeking inspiration in her presence, or absence, or rather fantasy, a troubled writer embarks on a stormy journey of love, passion and potentially perdition.

This intimate drama follows Rebecca, a woman who has kept her sexuality a secret from her friends but chooses to reveal it to a stranger. While Rebecca's revelations may not yield the results she expects, a perfect ending is still in reach.

What limits does Malena cross to get what she wants most? Malena is a 38 year old middle class doctor from Buenos Aires. One afternoon she receives the call from Doctor Costas, who informs her that she must travel immediately to the north of the country: the baby she was waiting for is about to be born. Unexpectedly Malena decides to embark on an uncertain journey, full of crossroads, facing all kinds of legal and moral obstacles that will make her constantly wondering how far she is ready to go.

Two beautiful young women on vacation looking for fun. Two dirty cops looking for easy prey. One human auction where the rich, dominant and powerful bid for slaves to satisfy all sexual desires including lesbian submission. They have been located, framed and convinced to confess to a crime they did not commit or face a lifetime in a prison of women...now their innocence will be sold to the highest bidder.

An erotic melodrama about the public and private lives of sex workers. Erica is a single mother who works a stripper, and sometimes as a prostitute to support her daughter. But when the threat of losing parental rights to her child looms, Erica tries to escape from the dark world of the sex industry, but it turns out to be not so easy to do.

The story opens with Celestine eluding arrest with a friend as the police raid a brothel. While hiding out in the hayloft of the Count de la Braquette's estate, she meets the hayseed handyman Sébastien and the butler Malou, who reward her favors with the offer of employment. In a manner recalling Terence Stamp's effect on the household in TEOREMA, Celestine's open and relaxed attitude toward sexuality has a transformative effect on the isolated, moribund inhabitants of the mansion, imbuing them with gift of renewed life for the men and women alike, that remains even after a third act twist that forces her to betray them.

A good-looking but naive lad leaves his mountain village to try and make his way in Paris. He thinks maybe he will try acting but things don't go too well for him. Eventually he is forced to sell himself to men and though he meets an attractive girl she is herself a prostitute with a vicious pimp.

Paris, the late 1960s. Madame Claude is at the head of a flourishing business dedicated to prostitution that gives her power over both the french political and criminal worlds. But the end of her empire is closer than she thinks.

A prophetic young dishwasher with brain-damage and a homeless prostitute are brought together through obscene circumstances and embark on a perverse journey through the gutter.

Interweaving stories of four different women involved in the sex industry offers a glimpse into the dark underbelly of Los Angeles and the taboo lifestyle of a sex worker. A teen runaway, single mother and two career escorts interconnect through their own personal journeys filled with loss, betrayal and the struggle to survive. Written by anonymous

Léo, a 22-year-old homeless sex worker searches for genuine love on the streets of Strasbourg.

Emma, a French novelist aged 27, decide to go to Berlin and join a brothel to uncover the prostitution world, the subject of her new book. Such as gonzo journalism, Emma become a prostitute and her experience, which was supposed to last a few weeks, will last two years. Was writing her book an excuse for Emma to live a shameful fantasy?

A social drama about four marginalized prostitutes in Marrakech and their complex relations with their families and society at large.

Prey to his desire for women, Richard O. explores the sinuous mysteries of eroticism in a Paris full of summer inhabitants in the torrid month of August.

The true story of Saartje Baartman, a black South African worker who moves to London with her master in the early 19th century. Although she dreams of being an artist, once in Europe she is exploited as a sideshow attraction due to her large buttocks and genitalia.

A daughter seeks to restore the reputation of her disgraced father, a wronged college professor. With help of a professional student, she must overcome an ambitious sorority bitch and corrupt college dean.

While Erendira, a beautiful teenage girl, has a surreal mystical vision, her grandmother's house catches on fire and burns to the ground. Her grandmother holds Erendira responsible and, in order to extract restitution from the girl, forces her into prostitution. Erendira's surreal mystical experiences continue while her grandmother grows rich from exploiting her.

A sequel movie to The Diary (1999). The movie succeed to replicate the 30's, between the two world war, between Paris and London. Anna (Lila Baumann) arranges Dr. Cristina Inger, a female physician for her paralyzed husband's treatment and she joins the shows at nightclubs as a stripteaser and prostitute to pay her. Husband is cured but fell in love with Dr. Cristina.

She's a beautiful gifted performer, but her work is not the sort that invites popular acclaim. Despite the fact that she is unlikely to become famous, she enjoys her life as a performer who lives just outside the mainstream. Awaiting her backstage one evening is a Spanish painter who has seen her show and wants to make her acquaintance. They walk around Paris getting to know one another, and then the painter returns to Spain. Something about the man has moved Lady M to passion: she flies to meet him in Barcelona and he shows her his beloved Catalonia. This time, however, their relationship is as much about passionate lovemaking as it is about compatibility. So smitten is Lady M with her new man that when she discovers that the painter has a black wife and child, she is only a little bit taken aback and she invites his whole family to join her in Paris. Surprisingly, they do, and the number of people sharing their love and sexual appetites changes from two to three.

George, a charismatic and adventurous young woman, born from an old, catholic family, falls in love, in her teens, with a female teacher named Sybil. Devastated by her lover's eventual suicide, some years later, George embarks on an exciting and reckless journey to the depths of Pigalle's nightlife, circa 1960. After an encounter with a very wealthy, still attractive, but older woman, Odete, who offers her money and gifts in return for sexual favours, George becomes Gigola, a kind of gigolo for women only.

A French police inspector with the help of Tazzi, a woman involved in a prostitution ring, track down the man who murdered Tazzi's sister.

A woman's life takes an unexpected turn when she falls for her boss's wife. She must soon defend herself as she becomes entangled in a web of malice.