Sell/Buy/Date

Jones — who wrote, directed and stars in the film — doesn’t treat the tensions between exploitation and empowerment, personal agency and systemic cruelties, as binaries. Instead, they are riveting, confounding and, as exchanges between Jones and her mother attest, personal.

Jones sets out to find out if sex work is empowering, but what she discovers, and what we are reminded of over the course of Sell/Buy/Date, is that vulnerability and sharing your story, in whatever form that takes, is the most empowering way to be in the world.

The documentary material is informative and mind-opening. The mockumentary surrounding it is a bit of a drag, and lets the movie down.

Jones clearly has valuable insights about being a Black woman in entertainment and has the chops to tell a captivating story. What any of that has to do with the sex industry is a total mystery.