Kim’s friend, Amanda, is loose. At 19 years of age, she is unhesitatingly inviting of Peter, the honey-trap who latched on to the girls at the French airport and followed them back to the apartment where they were staying in France. She jumps at the idea of joining him for a party later and readily provides him with specific details about their location in the building, which he dutifully communicated to the would-be kidnappers as soon as he was out of sight of the girls. Inside the flat, to Kim’s shock, Amanda announces her intention to copulate with Peter because she hears that French men are good in bed.
Kim’s character is juxtaposed against Amanda’s for emphasis. Kim is cautious, prudent, and conscientious. When, upon arrival from the airport, Amanda eagerly accepts Peter’s invitation to the party, Kim protests as discretely as she can, saying:
“Amanda, we don’t even know him!”
“What’s there to know?” Amanda retorts, “he’s hot!”
After learning about Amanda’s cousins’ absence from the apartment, Kim feels concerned because she had told her father that they would stay with the cousins. Amanda is unconcerned and deflects by reminding Kim of another lie that she had told her father, being that they would visit museums when, in fact, they intended to follow a rock band around Europe on their music Tour. When Amanda announces her intention to “sleep with” Peter, Kim protests, saying:
“You just met him!”
Amanda ignores this and says: “I hear French guys are amazing in bed.” Then tries to encourage Kim to follow her lead, saying: “Maybe he has a friend, huh?”
“No! No!”, Kim protests.
“Oh, come on. You gotta lose it sometime. Might as well be in Paris!”
Later in the film, when we see her drugged up and dead, the scene seems to present it as a logical and natural consequence of her character when she was alive.
Nonetheless, though being a virgin, Kim was not immune to meeting a similar fate, eventually. It was an inevitability. Although her virginity helped to delay demise of the kind that came upon Amanda, her eventual disintegration would be assured by the fact that she would certainly be downgraded to exploitation by the ‘non-special clientele’ once she ceased to be a virgin following her utilization and discard by the “very special clientele”. She would not have been saved except for the determined pursuit of the avenging angel that was her father.
The portrayal of Amanda makes you wonder about society’s perception of American girls’ sexual behaviour in 2008, when this film was made. However, in fact, the character portrayal is not a proven accurate depiction of American teenage girls. There is no factual consensus in real-life society that American girls were this way constituted in 2008. Also, the film seems to suggest that her plight came about because of her behaviour. Again, it should be understood that human trafficking does not choose its victims based on behaviour. In fact, most victims are vulnerable people taken in by force, coercion, or deception.
“As climate disasters, conflicts, and displacement converge and their consequences cascade, vulnerabilities are growing. Some of the people at the heart of those crises are pushed directly into trafficking and exploitation, others are left without homes and prospects and at huge risk of trafficking, while others still are exposed due to structural risks created by low incomes and insecurity.” (Ghada Waly, Executive Director | ‘UNODC Research, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2024‘).
The notion of American girls as especially promiscuous in that era is a cultural stereotype, and truth or not, using it to explain retribution through kidnapping, trafficking, and murder is misleading and harmful. Naivety about the motivations behind human trafficking can fool people into complacency, with both potential victims and the justice system adopting a narrow perception that leaves one group more susceptible to victimhood and the other ill-equipped to offer adequate protection, respectively.
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