Customer Reviews

Princesa

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

PRINCESA is an Italian film that hints of Fellini's best movies and yet has a style that is less bravure and more sensitive and touching. The world of prostitution has been widely examined by writers and directors, but the world of prostitution where the main characters are all transexuals or transvestites has only been sugggested in the works of Almodovar and a few other daring avant garde directors. PRINCESA (the street name of the main character, a young man from Brazil who moves to Milan to make enough money as a hooker to pay for his much desired gender change operation) takes on only the subject of how these extravagantly dressed prostitutes survive the street life that supports them. There are friends of Princesa who are also from Brazil and the dialog is in both Italin and Portugese and well transtlated in subtitles. The story is simple: Princesa falls in love with a 'john' who at first rejects her when he discovers she has male genitalia even though her face and breast implants costume her as a beautiful woman. The rejected Princesa moves in with the Madame of the prostitutes (Karin - likewise a transexual) and finds support and caring and a good life. When Princesa's 'john' (Gianni) returns to apologize for his initial behavior, they slowly develop a relationship, fall in love, and the rest ....you must see the film to discover.

The characters are so beautifully acted that it is difficult to tell if the actors are male or female! The cast is strong, never creating parodies but instead allowing the inner person to emarge in a credible way. The photography and music score are excellent. A very fine litlle movie this!

If you liked 'The Crying Game' you'll probably like this. Not that they deal with similar material, but the sense of a seedy paralell world existing next to the one most of us inhabit is there. Cesare Bocci is fine as hell. I wish he were in more films. Ingrid de Souza is a beautiful and sympathetic character but you get frustrated with her choice at the end. Overall, definately worth adding to your dvd collection.

Princesa definitely shows the difference between the open sexual attitudes of Italian people and those of the more parochial and puritanical American people. Most Americans will hate this movie because it goes against the homo-erotic grain. There's a good reason why it was filmed with sub-titles: It would have bombed in an American release except in the most intellectual of audiences and it was only shown on the Sundance channel.

It's a fabulous weaving of character and explains the interconnection of a transgender's life. Even a gay or lesbian would fail to understand what it means to be transgender so don't even try; just watch and accept that this is what it is.

Whoever wrote this script definitely either knew a transgender person or was transgender because they hit the nail right on the head. The director must have also had someone who was transgender looking over his shoulder and suggesting nuance because the detail is astonishing.

It isn't a spectacular life being a hooker. I was a cabbie for a few years in Virginia and I hauled my fair share of transgender hookers to-and-from their nightly hot-spots. It offered me the opportunity to talk with them and ask all the right questions. Many of their "Johns" were Navy guys who hated gay men but wouldn't hesitate to bed a "chick with a d**k". Odd that heterosexuals would find such a distinction but they do.

The major difference between American guys and Gianni in the movie is that Americans can't get over their homophobia long enough to realize that they might love someone who was born with the same equipment.

In the end, though, Fernanda proves the more mature of the two of them. Feature that: A woman who out-matures a man. Hard to imagine, huh?

If you have the intellect and the patience for the subtitles, trust me and watch this movie. You won't regret it. It will be the best two hours you can spend and the best purchase you can make for a well-rounded international library!

I am honest: I viewed the film primarily for a conference project and I am working with the topic. My approach to the film hence was not impartial. Nonetheless, I think I can say with enough 'cold blood' that the film deserves way more credit than it has publicly achieved. Based on the memoirs of the real transgender woman Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque, Ingrid de Souza plays her role of Fernanda Farias, coming to Milan as a sex worker, to earn enough money for her sex reassingment (I prefer the term 'sex - reaffirmation') surgery. She sees the street as a passage in her life she wantsto get rid of as soon as possible, and when she finally falls in love with the successful lawyer Gianni, who leaves his wife for Fernanda and moves in with her, she sees her dreams come true. In a series of shots, director Henrique Goldman shows how paradise soon turns into hell - but not because of maltreatment on behalf of Gianni. Quite the opposite, Gianni is as caring as a partner can be - if only Fernanda did not find herself pushed into the traditionalied roles of the nourishing housewife. When Gianni's wife Livia shows up, telling that she is pregnant from him, Fernanda painfully realizes what she will never be able to become - and returns to the streets.

The film - in a sometimes more than explicit language - shows the two most painful labellings for transwomen: either they are perceived as sex-workers, or as wanting to stick my any means to excessively traditionalist roles of a housewife and mother - and the latter is simply not doable for transwomen, if we take the term of a mother biologically. The film shows how Fernanda gets caught up in stereotyped discurse fields - and how there is no getting out of them.

Goldman manages to create an impressive insight into the life of a transwoman who actually wants what anyone else wants: being loved and taken care of. Goldman's views are pessimistic, but he does not portray Fernanda solely as the victim. Clearly, the pictures Goldman uses are stereotyped, sometimes in a manner which is grotesque and reminds more a farce rather than a drama - but at the same time it is also a view on transgender issues remote from the TV-world, which all to often promises success stories in a make-believe.

A great movie that captures the reality that Many transsexuals face and the trials they go through in life. Dealing with friends, society, false friends and basically how it's not as easy for transsexuals to be who they are happily cause of how other people treat us or assume we are.

This movie dares to humanize transgender prostitutes and succeeds by reaffirming that "Everybody's Got The Right To Love" (The Supremes, 1970). A good old-fashioned love story with a twist. Nice train and Milan railroad station shots.

This movie portays a pathetic character, fitting the stereotypical tranny prostitute who has absolutely no self respect for herself.

Here's the synopsis:
She comes to the city to work as a prostitute (having to first give in to advances from a customs official when her passport doesn't quite pass "him" off for a her). While working the streets for a pimp madam,(somehow) she falls in "love" with a john who kicks her out of his car when learning of her true gender, tries to get a "normal life" with the guy (who is married by the way) and once that all implodes, she happily goes back to the joyous world of working the streets for the madam again. The End.

It will leave you scratching your head and mourning the time you wasted watching this. NOT worth it.