Sook-Yin Lee adapts a graphic novel by her ex-boyfriend, Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, about the end of their relationship and Brown’s subsequent decision to start paying for sex. Dan Beirne (The Twentieth Century) plays Brown, and he’s joined by a cast that includes Emily Lê as Lee stand-in Sonny and Andrea Werhun as Yulissa, the sex worker who forms a long-term bond with Brown.
Paying For It is admirably frank, and Lee is unafraid to venture into uncomfortable areas. The film is set in the 90s and aughts, and the progressive-minded curiosity of Brown, Yulissa, and Sonny casts them as well ahead of their time: their questioning of sexual conventions is daring even for 2024. Beirne plays Brown as a calm, curious adventurer who is unwilling to be held back by taboos, and Werhun shines as the ingratiating prostitute who matches his needs, both sexual and social. Lê’s Sonny is likewise a charming character, lovable for her honesty as she navigates the uncertain territory of sex in the contemporary world.
Sept 30: Q&A with director Sook-Yin Lee; actor Emily Lê; author Chester Brown; and editor Anna Catley
Oct 1: Q&A with director Sook-Yin Lee; actor Emily Lê; and author Chester Brown
Community Partner
Daniel Beirne, Emily Lê, Andrea Werhun, Noah Lamanna
Canada
2024
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Dan Beirne, John Cameron Mitchell
Producer
Matt Code, Sonya Di Rienzo, Aeschylus Poulos
Screenwriter
Sook-Yin Lee, Joanne Sarazen
Cinematography
Gayle Ye
Editor
Anna Catley
Production Design
Olivia D’Oliveira
Original Music
Dylan Gamble, Sook-Yin Lee
Sook-Yin Lee
Sook-Yin Lee is a Toronto-based filmmaker, musician, actor, and broadcaster. She starred in Shortbus (2006), the ground-breaking 2SLGBTQ movie that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Her feature film writer and directorial debut, Year of the Carnivore (2009), premiered at TIFF. Lee won the 2014 Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance by a Lead Dramatic Actress in Jack. In 2019, she wrote and performed Unsafe for Canadian Stage, which examined questions of censorship and artistic freedom. She won Best Director and Best Picture at the 2018 Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival for Octavio is Dead! Lee co-created the experimental comedies Rest and Relax (2024) and Death and Sickness (2020, CBC Gem), as well as contributing songs to Infinity Pool (2023) and Antiviral (2012).
Filmography: Year of the Carnivore (2009); Octavio is Dead! (2018); Death and Sickness (2020); Rest and Relax (2024)
Photo by Dylan Gamble
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Black Bag
In the last of his studies in the evolution of cinematography, Devan Scott surveys the modern era of digital photography and LED lighting, focusing in particular on the radical work of Steven Soderbergh, who regularly serves as his own cinematographer.
Amrum
Twelve-year-old Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck) sets himself a mission to secure bread and honey for his mother to snap her out of her depression. It is 1945. The war is all but lost, and such luxuries are not easy to find on the remote island of Amrum...
Silent Friend
In this entrancing reverie from On Body and Soul director Ildikó Enyedi, we are invited to contemplate several human specimens from the vantage point of a mighty Ginkgo biloba tree on the grounds of a German university.
Fiume o Morte!
The Croatian city of Rijeka rediscovers its own past in this delightfully unconventional hybrid documentary about Italian poet and proto-fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio, who seized the city known in Italian as Fiume in 1919.