Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival
Injecting some welcome vitality into the hoary hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold scenario, "En la Puta Vida", which has been given the more demure English-language title of "Tricky Life", is never less than involving thanks largely to a spirited lead performance by Mariana Santangelo.
Uruguay's official submission for foreign language Oscar consideration (it was also screened earlier this year at the Nortel Palm Springs International Film Festival), the picture tells the eventful story of Elisa (Santangelo), a 27-year-old single mother of two young boys whose dream is to open her own hair salon in Montevideo.
Determined to hasten that process, she and her best friend, Loulou (Andrea Fantoni), discover they can make quick cash as prostitutes, with Elisa soon catching the eye of dapper pimp Placido (Silvestre), who relocates both women to his second operation in Barcelona, where her dream quickly dissolves into a brutal nightmare.
Director Beatriz Flores Silva, who also wrote the screenplay with Janos J. Kovacsi, tempers the stuff of standard South American soaps with some grittier real-life edges, including an escalating Barcelona turf war between the Uruguayan streetwalkers and Brazilian transvestites.
But the film truly belongs to Santangelo, whose impassioned journey from struggling mom to belle of the brothel to duped victim to civil rights crusader never hits a forced note. If there was any justice in the movie world, Santangelo would be one of its brightest new stars.
Injecting some welcome vitality into the hoary hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold scenario, "En la Puta Vida", which has been given the more demure English-language title of "Tricky Life", is never less than involving thanks largely to a spirited lead performance by Mariana Santangelo.
Uruguay's official submission for foreign language Oscar consideration (it was also screened earlier this year at the Nortel Palm Springs International Film Festival), the picture tells the eventful story of Elisa (Santangelo), a 27-year-old single mother of two young boys whose dream is to open her own hair salon in Montevideo.
Determined to hasten that process, she and her best friend, Loulou (Andrea Fantoni), discover they can make quick cash as prostitutes, with Elisa soon catching the eye of dapper pimp Placido (Silvestre), who relocates both women to his second operation in Barcelona, where her dream quickly dissolves into a brutal nightmare.
Director Beatriz Flores Silva, who also wrote the screenplay with Janos J. Kovacsi, tempers the stuff of standard South American soaps with some grittier real-life edges, including an escalating Barcelona turf war between the Uruguayan streetwalkers and Brazilian transvestites.
But the film truly belongs to Santangelo, whose impassioned journey from struggling mom to belle of the brothel to duped victim to civil rights crusader never hits a forced note. If there was any justice in the movie world, Santangelo would be one of its brightest new stars.
- 7/29/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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