From this movie, it is easy to see how the director made it out of Holland and landed in mainstream Hollywood. He takes a very serious subject, extreme poverty and how it leads to social uprising, and adds his personal light touches that almost make you forget the political subtext. The "finger shadow" scene before the rape was a touch of cinematic genius that I almost missed the first time around.
The ultimate lesson seems to me to be, of course, that we are all whores, it just depends on how much we can afford to spend on clothes.
One question, if she was so poor, how did she keep her roots died blonde?