Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

SnoopyStyle Ashley Arbaugh is a model scout recruiting new blood in Siberia for the Japan market. She finds 13 year old Nadya Vall blonde country girl. Tigran Khachatrian is the owner of Noah Models and represents Nadya. Her mother is overjoyed that Nadya is the rising star. The family needs her to make money and she needs to earn to stay in Japan. It's culture shock, language barrier, and homesickness at first. She is paired with Madlen who is more cynical. The cattle call is eye-opening for its bluntness. It becomes obvious that the girls are not much more than product with a short expiration date. Ex-model Ashley holds some honest insights. However as grim and sad it all seems, this doc feels like it's holding back it punches. It digs into the first level but does not dig any deeper. This shows plenty of ugly underbelly but it only leaves me expecting more.

alex Turner When most people think of models they think of glitz and glamour and beautiful women. Girl Model flips that image on it's head and shows the real ugly side of the modeling industry. This documentary follows Nadia, a shy and sweet natured thirteen year old from rural Siberia. She wins a modeling contract and gets to go to Japan. She hopes her work as a model will support her family. She is "discovered" by American model scout Ashley. This documentary has no shortage of creeps and crazies but Ashley takes the cake. A former model herself, Ashley travels around Russia looking for the youngest and freshest faces to send to some creep in Japan that calls himself "Messiah". It's basically 1 step short of all out child trafficking. Ashley say's she feels bad about it but that's kind of hard to believe. She seems to enjoy living in her Connecticut mansion complete with creepy anatomically correct baby dolls, specialty made boxes for storing creepy fetish photos of teenage girl's feet and mounds of tape titled "Russian Teens" a little too much. As a young model she made creepy tapes of herself. I hope for her sake she was on drugs. Later on she gets fibroids and cysts and act's like she's pregnant. Umm OK.. Personally, I think Ashley should hold off on her next trip on the trans-siberian railway and instead check herself into the closest mental hospital stat. I'd feel bad for her if she wasn't so casually evil. As for Nadia, she lives in a tiny apartment in Japan. For a while she has a roommate, Madlen but she gets sent home for gaining an inch on her waist. She doesn't have any sort of chaperon and she doesn't speak English or Japanese. Nadia, barely gets work in Japan and in the end leave the country $2000 in debt to her agency. Her story isn't unique. Unfortunately as long as the fashion industry demands super young models and young girls from poor countries like Russia are willing to take these risks, and psychopaths like Ashley are willing to profit from these practices nothing will change for young girls like Nadia.

Matt Brown [...]The film is obviously dark and upsetting, but it left me with so many unanswered questions. Perhaps in our age of America's Next Top Model, the directors expected a certain base understanding of the modeling industry, but I could have used some more guidance. I would have appreciated a narrator or on-screen captions saying things like "This is a recruiter. It is the recruiter's job to…" or "Nadya is now auditioning for…" Maybe I just have a way below average understanding of modeling, but the whole time I kept asking myself very basic questions that could have been easily explained, and would have made for a much more educational film.Additionally, the filmmakers failed to elaborate on certain themes that were mentioned in passing, often by Ashley (who was an utter enigma as a character, hovering between denial and insanity). Themes like prostitution and sex trafficking, and illegal underage models. These are issues that could use some unpacking. Ashley would say something like, "We all know that some girls turn to prostitution (though she never even says the word), but I don't have any first-hand evidence of that," and then she would move onto another topic. I think in cases like this, it is the filmmakers role to step in; if not to press Ashley further in the interview than at least to provide the audience with a statistic or something. However, the directors seemed determined to keep the narrative confined to the claustrophobic world of the characters that they were following, leaving the audience to scratch their heads and speculate. Additionally, with no additional information, the viewer is left with no idea about the scope of the problem. Are situations like this the exception or the rule? Are they limited to Japan, or to this one particular agency, or should we now assume that any photograph we see in a fashion magazine has a crying Russian child behind it? What can we do to prevent situations like this? We simply are never given any of the answers.Girl Model was an engaging and disturbing documentary, though it left me wanting to know more. It showed us the characters and told us their story, but left out a lot of the context necessary to create a holistic understanding. I'll probably end up trying to do some more research about the topic to answer some of the questions that I had, but it would have been nice it the directors had done that work for me.Read the full review here: http://mattreviewsstuff.com/2012/04/25/girl-model/

The Backseat Director Former model and now jaded scout (read: human trafficker), Ashley Arbaugh, reveals the ugly truth that there is no glamour in modeling.With incredibly questionable morals on display from just about everyone, from the 13 year old Siberian child's mother pushing her daughter into modelling (read: slavery), through to the curious agency owner who knows that there is no money to be made on these girls who stay in Japan for three weeks only to return home with $2k worth of debt for the family (along with a nice mentally scarred teenager).Ashley, the soulless globetrotting star of this film, is self-indulgent beyond belief in her self- pity, which, if you try really hard to push past her shocking, confronting can-I-slap-her exterior, you might just see a a raw and damaged woman. A template that you can easily imagine these 13 year old girls are now going to grow into themselves.Yet another awesome example of documentary kicking fiction's butt in the creation of monstrous characters, and nothing says this better than the agent (read: child catcher) that enthusiastically talks about bringing happiness and wealth to all of the girls and their families, and how this mantra of helping others must exist because he had been a bad man in a previous life. Classic.Watch out for one of cinema's most uncomfortable scenes when Ashley drops in to say hello to the two models in their rather compact apartment (or shall we say 'cell').