‘Sweetheart Deal,’ set on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue, is transformative

Watching the documentary “Sweetheart Deal,” set on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue North and following four women involved in prostitution as they struggle with addiction and trying to rebuild their lives, is a transformative experience; you leave it astonished by the enormous range of human capacity, for strength and for evil. Co-directors Elisa Levine and Gabriel Miller set out, years ago, to tell what they envisioned as a rather loosely structured tale of life on the street (the project was originally called “Aurora Stories”), but what they ended up with was something rather different: a story with surprising twists and turns, and a remarkably powerful final act that lingers for a long time with its viewers.

Seattle-based filmmaker Levine, interviewed on Zoom earlier this month while she was in New York for “Sweetheart Deal” screenings, said the bulk of the filming took place between 2011 and 2017. As early as 2008, “I was just looking for stories around Aurora,” she said. Finally completed, the film screened at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2022 (where the filmmakers were awarded the Lena Sharpe Award for Persistence of Vision), and was acquired for distribution this past summer. It will have a theatrical run nationwide this fall, including a weeklong Seattle engagement at the SIFF Film Center beginning Sept. 27.

Levine said she and Miller were inspired by Mary Ellen Mark’s groundbreaking documentary “Streetwise,” about the lives of teenage girls involved in prostitution in downtown Seattle — a film celebrating its 40^th anniversary this year. She first saw the film as a college student, “and it had such a huge impact because I didn’t know you could do that with documentary film — I didn’t even know that was possible.” She cited the cinema vérité style (observational filmmaking, without a narrator), the artful photography and “this incredible access to this group of homeless kids — you really get to know each one of them, on a very intimate level.”

If you go looking for stories on Aurora Avenue North — with its stretches of weary storefronts in Seattle’s north end and struggles with prostitution, drugs and violence — you will likely find them. Levine and Miller, hanging out with their cameras and listening, soon became close to four women: Kristine, a caustically funny welder by trade; Amy, a former sorority sister from a middle-class home; Tammy, who reluctantly supports her parents through sex work; and Sara, a mother estranged from her young children. All of them have turned to prostitution to support a drug habit; all of them, caught in a cycle of addiction and financial crisis, are desperate to find a way back to a better life. “I hate being a prostitute,” says Kristine flatly, saying she can only work the streets when she’s drunk or high, which “makes what should be intolerable, tolerable.”

And all of them are connected by an older man named Elliott (full name: Laughn Elliott Doescher), who calls himself “the mayor of Aurora” and lives on the street in his camper van, where he offers what initially looks like a safe haven. He clearly sees himself as something of a savior for these women; making them hot drinks, remembering their birthdays, offering a warm, dry place to crash. There’s clearly affection between them — Sara calls him “Papa” — but there’s also something undeniably creepy about him, obvious from the earliest scenes. Only in the film’s last act do we get the full picture of Elliott, and it’s horrifying — to us, and to the filmmakers at the time. He talks to the women about monsters; they don’t yet know that the monster is right there in that van.

“I definitely didn’t think it was going to have such a definite ending,” said Levine, of the film’s final turn. Generally, she said, in films like these, “people cycle in and out of addiction and you get to see a window into their lives,” but rarely do you get this sort of dramatic real-life twist. Though Levine was reluctant to discuss details of the film’s late scenes, preferring to let viewers discover for themselves, she noted her admiration for how the women processed the situation — particularly Amy, later called Krista, who has a remarkable scene of empowerment late in the film.  

“Sweetheart Deal” is undeniably difficult to watch, but it’s also surprisingly beautiful: both in its depiction of resilience and survival, and in Miller’s often breathtaking cinematography. We see nighttime traffic on Aurora, ebbing like a dark tide; car lights fading into candy-colored dots; the burnt-orange beauty of fall leaves; Christmas lights shining bravely through the rain; a bird crossing an unexpectedly bright sky. Tragically, Miller died unexpectedly in 2019 at the age of 47, never seeing the finished film. “I think that he would just be really thrilled and touched with the reception that we’ve gotten,” Levine said.

On the film festival circuit, “Sweetheart Deal” has won multiple awards, and Levine has enjoyed connecting with audiences. “I never know what’s going to happen with the Q&As — each audience is different — but it’s very exciting,” she said. “We get all different kinds of people, and people really seem to be touched by the film.” Krista, whose life is now quite different from what the film depicts, has appeared at several screenings — “people are always really, really excited to get to see her.” Asked about the other women, Levine said she has kept in touch with them, and that they’re at different stages in their recovery.

While already thinking about her next film — there’s a biopic idea in her head that’s percolating — Levine is still very much engaged with “Sweetheart Deal,” and with the feeling she had when she first saw “Streetwise.” She hopes that audiences will find “a sense of … I want to say longing, but it’s like you love these people. You’re seeing yourself reflected back — everyone, even if they haven’t gone through addiction, they’ve gone through their own struggles. I just wanted it to feel relatable like that.” She’s happy to hear from audiences that are finding the film an engrossing cinematic experience, and said she’s “very grateful that we can provide a little bit of hope at the end.”