La Dolce Vita

On a rainy afternoon I watched the new film from French director, Pierre Morel film, Taken. I had heard that it would shock me out of ever wanting to travel waywardly abroad again. The plot: two innocent and spoiled 17-year-old Los Angeles girls are desperate to frolic about Europe seeing U2 concerts and staying in luxury hotels. Due to the proliferation of jet setting rich kids in boarding school and university, this scenario is more familiar to me than I would like to admit.

The two young lovelies arrive in Paris and within minutes they meet a pseudo-French Wanker of the Week character, who effortlessly charms them into attending a party with him that evening. But, instead of picking them up at their auntie's apartment at 9pm as planned, he and his brood of perverted Croatian men break in and abduct the naïve young lovelies. It is a frighteningly near-realistic story of a network of sex traffickers who kidnap innocent female foreigners and force them into a cycle of heroin dependence and prostitution. Some of the girls—the prettiest, most virginal ones—are even sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars to become sex slaves to greasy Middle Eastern princes and the like.

Maybe this film should be mandatory viewing for all high school Freshmen. I can count on one hand the number of girls for whom this story wouldn't have come true. When traveling as a young woman, evil lurks at every corner, but somehow a wink and a sexy accent can mask any sense of impending doom.