Venice Review: Roberto De Paolis’ Horizons Opener ‘Princess’
31.08.2022 - 17:33
/ deadline.com
Roberto De Paolis’ second film has such a heightened sense of the absurd — a playful, almost naïve tone that’s completely at odds with its subject matter — that it can only come from real life. That turns out to be very much the case in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section opener Princess, a story based on the true-experiences of Nigerian sex workers, many of them trafficked, in contemporary Italy. The result is a curiously queasy mix of comedy and drama that, while taking an admirable view of its lead character as a complex heroine rather than a victim to be pitied, falls into many of the same tropes in more cliched depictions of prostitution.
The title character, Princess (Glory Kevin), works in a forest outside a major city with her friend Success, with whom she competes for “clients” — usually white men who pull up in their sports cars, trucks and family hatchbacks. Princess wears a pink wig, Success a red wig, and later, after a falling out, they swap hairpieces to see who’s the more popular.
It’s a largely skittish story, but the opening scenario sets a rather odd tone; after being teased by a bunch of mean construction workers posing as punters, Princess finds some road kill and takes it back to the ramshackle camp where she and Success cook it for the rest of their loose-knit, largely Nigerian circle of friends.
This is a rare glimpse of the true poverty experienced by these working girls, whose “othered” existence is completely mediated by money — from the societal pressures of needing it just to get by to the greed of their families back home. The talk is quick-fire, a mix of pidgin English and very basic Italian that would be almost impossible to follow without subtitles and which leads to some quite
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