PRINCESAS

This prostitute drama is the anti-Pretty Woman, despite the deceivingly-happy DVD cover art.

Princesas, somewhere between its run in theaters and its release on DVD, seems to have had a bizarre marketing facelift. In this drama about a couple of prostitutes who become friends, the original poster accurately portrays the tone of the film. One woman, Caye (Candela Peña) looks blankly from the image, with weary eyes, while Zulema (Micaela Nevárez) is slumped in the background, staring at her feet. But when I checked out the film, I opened up a DVD case showing two smiling pretty women, caught in mid-delighted laughter, with a critic's quote on the back cover that said "Hilarious and deeply moving!" (Michael Ferraro, Film Threat). Well, I don't know what film he saw, but jeez, point out the hilarity to me in a movie where one character is continuously beaten by a rotten and conniving john, and the other is not "out" to her family as a whore, and struggles to maintain any personal relationship outside the business.

Caye is a sarcastic prostitute that hangs with her catty cohorts in a Madrid beauty salon, gazing critically at the new girls in the park that have been stealing their business. Their rivals are all immigrants, most of them without legal papers, most of them willing to do anything to lure business from the locals. Despite her initial disdain for these girls, Caye ends up befriending Zulema, a beautiful woman from the Dominican Republic, who she stumbles across after Zulema suffers a brutal "date" with a john.

No one is more surprised about their friendship than Caye herself, who seems to have found not only a kindred spirit, but a friend who actually sees a future outside of the business. Before Zulema was around, Caye's main goal was to save up her cash to buy herself bigger tits. Caye starts to hope for an actual relationship with a sweet computer guy name Manuel (the effective Luis Callejo), and gets a reality check that her occupation makes the seemingly simple idea of dating much harder than it should be. In the meantime, Zulema longs for her home country, where her 5-year-old boy lives, while she sends money home.

If that sounds bleak, well, yes, Princesas is exactly that. Despite the quote on the back of the DVD box that says the film is "sweet and romantic" (what the???), this is no Pretty Woman. Any fleeting moments of happiness that the characters find is always followed by a heavy cost.

Despite the plot plodding along hopelessly, the film does have some buoyancy simply from the presence from the excellent Candela Peña, who won the Goya for Best Actress for her performance as Caye. Caye does find some humor in her life, and she keeps her emotions open enough to discard her prejudices in order to make a friend and to meet a good man. So it makes her scenes with boyfriend Manuel all the more devastating when reality of her other life keeps interrupting her attempts at normality. You may not find much uplifting about Princesas, but if you can stand the bleakness, you'll be rewarded by a star-making turn by the intriguing Peña.