April 11, 2007
Princesas: Beyond the "hookers with heart of gold" cliche
Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½
Candela Peña is so good so often that I wonder when American audiences are going to catch on. (We're often slow, particularly when critics aren't paying enough attention.) Ms. Peña is quite different from film to film, though she usually looks rather similar: Torremolinos 73, Take My Eyes, God Is on the Air, No Shame, What Makes Women Laugh, All About My Mother, Mouth to Mouth--to name a few of her 20 appearances so far, often in lesser roles in which she is never less than wonderful. In Princesas, winner of three Spanish Goya awards but which came and went theatrically in the blink of an eye, she plays a prostitute. The actress won several awards for the role, but her version is no whore-with-a-heart-of-gold: she's angry, frightened-but-determined and oddly decent. This decency infuses the entire film and is likely to do the same for viewers.
Written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, the movie tells the story of Caye (Peña) and the Dominican friend she makes, somewhat begrudgingly, who is also a whore and sends her proceeds back home to her mother and her son. God knows, there's plenty of chance for sentimentality here but de Aranoa sidesteps it nicely. He shows us an interestingly wide sampling of prostitutes, their friends and family, their johns, the police, the social workers, and more. But it is the two actresses (the Dominican Zulema is played very well by newcomer Micaela Nevarez) who make the most compelling guides to the world's oldest profession, one that remains--even in a country as forward-looking as today's Spain--perhaps the most unfair, and dangerous, of jobs.
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