Cinematical

Princesas is a poetic, moving film about two women, Caye (Candela Peña) and Zulema (newcomer Micaela Nevárez), who find love and friendship with each other while working the streets as putas (whores). Caye is from a middle-class family who don't know she is a prostitute; Caye and the other Spanish putas hang out at a beauty shop all day while waiting for customers, but are increasingly being underpriced by the immigrant putas who crowd the streets.

Among them is Zule, a strikingly lovely illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic, whom Caye first meets when Zule steals a john from under her nose. The next time they meet, Caye finds Zule in her apartment, badly beaten, and takes her to the hospital. Caye's heart softens toward Zule when she learns Zule has a young son she is working the streets to support. The two women forge a friendship, but Caye hides her friendship with Zule from her Spanish friends for fear they will see her as a traitor.

Both Caye and Zule are isolated from their families - both of them by shame, and not wanting anyone to know what they do, and Zule also by distance. Both women dream of a better life; Caye is saving up to get a breast augmentation, and spends her spare time pasting photographs onto pictures of models with more "desirable" bodies, because she is convinced she can earn more money with larger breasts. Zule wants desperately to get legal working papers so she can get a legitimate job, make more money and be reunited with her son. They are both entangled in relationships, Caye with Manuel, a computer programmer who seems too good to be true; Zule with a physically abusive man who claims to be able to get her legal papers, but who demands sex as a "down payment" and beats Zule mercilessly.

With Princesas, director Fernando Léon de Aranoa has made a film that is so much more than just another film about prostitutes. Princesas is framed in a series of relationships: the friendship between Caye and Zule; between the Spanish and immigrant putas; between Zule and her son; between Caye and her family; between the women who work the streets of Madrid and the men who use and abuse them. A driving theme throughout the film is that we only exist because others think of us. This idea has both positive and negative connotations. It means Zule's son exists because she holds him in her heart, but it also means that the putas exist because of the men who use them, and, conversely, that the johns exist only because the putas allow them to.

There are other complexly drawn relationships in the film as well. Caye visits her mother, brother and sister-in-law regularly for dinner, never revealing to them the dark secret of how she supports herself; no do we ever really learn why this woman from a middle class family chooses to work as a prostitute. Zule has a friendship with restaurant owners who will let her take pictures of herself as if she works there, but don't actually give her a job that would get her off the streets. She time-shares an apartment with another Dominican Republic family who insist she leave on time so their young son doesn't see her. Caye has a family of sorts among the other Spanish putas who hang out in the barbershop, but fears they will turn their backs on her if they learn of her friendship with Zule. The common threads weaving through all these relationships are perception shame and fear.

de Aranoa, who also wrote the script, looks unflinchingly at the harsh reality of the consequences of Caye and Zule working the streets, but he also shows us who they are as people. In that way, Princesas is similar to another Sundance film, Man Push Cart, which showed a similar slice of life about a pushcart vendor in New York City. Both films turn their lens to the invisible people of society - the people who anonymously serve the needs of other (usually richer) people. Whether it's a Pakistani immigrant serving coffee and doughnuts or Caye being forced to perform oral sex on a man who recognizes her from the streets while she's out on a date, both films touch on a side of society most of us don't often think of, or want to see ourselves as a part of. They make one realize that the little judgments we make about people, and the pedestal we place ourselves on above some of them, are based largely on our perceptions, not on really seeing beyond the surface things that label us as doctor, lawyer, business owner, beautician, prostitute; newsstand worker, busboy, pushcart vendor.

Caye and Zule want to see themselves as princesses, even as they work in a world where they are treated as objects for men's physical pleasure. In their friendship with each other, they give each other back a little of the dignity taken from them every day. Their love and friendship for each other buoys and supports them and keeps them moving forward. The film is bookended by remarkably astute and soul-deep performances from both Peña and Nevárez, who adeptly reveal the many facets of their characters, showing us multidimensional women who are much more than the sum of how society perceives them. Princesas is a touching exploration of two women who work in a dark profession, but find light through their friendship with each other. I enjoyed it very much, and will be on the lookout for more from both the director and his lead actresses in the future.

Others on Princesas: Film Threat's Michael Ferraro thought the film was "perfectly" directed, and found it "often hilarious and, at times, deeply moving." Also impressed were the voters for Spain's Goya Awards, who last night named Pena best actress, while also bestowing two other awards on the film.