By Jennifer Merin

Princesas

Directed by Fernando León de Aranoa

Princesas is a truthfully told and profoundly powerful character-driven drama about two “putas” who find in friendship their survival of hope. In Madrid’s sisterhood of whores, Cayetana (nicknamed Caye, pronounced like calle, the Spanish word for street) is an upper class call girl who hangs out with her peers in a beauty salon fronting a seedy square.

Tensions rage between these two competing groups—neither of which, needless-to-say, have even minimally satisfactory working conditions. In fact, all their lives are pretty shitty. Out of this fecal soil blooms a beautiful friendship between Caye (Candela Peña), alienated from her middle class family who don’t know what she does for a living, and Zulema (NY-based Micaela Nevárez), a Latin American beauty, whose son—the light of her life—is at home in the Dominican Republic, being cared for by her mother, who thinks she’s working as a cashier in a supermarket.

Zulema is perpetually beaten by johns but can’t report their violence to the police because she’s doesn’t have her immigration papers. In fact, one of the men who’s beating her is a police officer who dangles the promise of papers in exchange for free sex.

Caye discovers Zulema after she’s been badly beaten. The women bond, exchanging confidences and talking about tricks of their trade. Together, they begin to steal secret moments of normalcy, having fun going shopping and dancing, dining out and discussing their dreams. Caye’s dream is to be truly loved by one man—the ultimate sign of which would be having him pick her up from work. She imagines herself looking out her office window and seeing him waiting for her in the street below. But, it’s not likely to happen because when she meets a prospective mate, her dates with him are always interrupted by calls from her johns. The expression on her face at these moments is heartbreaking.

Writer/director Fernando León de Aranoa’s script is beautifully crafted. Caye and Zulema express their basic truths in simple and pure language, yet their words are often transformational. The plot reveals the disgraces of prostitution, but is remarkably non-judgmental and refreshingly free of anything salacious or scandalous. The only sordid behavior in the film is the violence committed by the johns, and even that is presented matter-of-factly. Viewers are spared watching their violence; instead he shows the prelude to the acts followed by the harrowing results.

Cinematically, León de Aranoa’s filmmaking is pure poetry and passionate compassion. Princesas is a profoundly humane portrayal of an inhuman condition. The film grabs you in the gut and compels you to examine your own beliefs and, hopefully, come to understand that the world’s oldest profession is, for some, something that should be called survival.