Princesa:(2001) Review

Film Review

This is an Italian film and probably the best film I have ever seen on the subject of transexuality/gender issues. It is the story of a Brazilian girl who goes to Milan in Italy to become a street sex worker so that she can get herself a sex change, and finalize her change to becoming Princesa, her ideal of the perfect woman.

To cut a long story short, she lives the life, falls in tempestous love with a man who appears perfect, and then opens her eyes to herself and finds love and family in the last place that she expects it. As, in some way or other, we all do.

The film is not porno, it is a love story and a story of someone growing up and becoming the person that they are, rather than either of the people that the world thinks that they should be. 

I found this film while I was in Rome, in the window of a closed video shop in the middle of the night, while I was walking home from a bunch of extremely interesting ruins. I came back and bought it the next day. My copy is in Italian, with Italian subtitles. Since I speak not more that five words of Italian, it has become one of my minor hobbies to watch the film, and attempt simultaneously learn the language and divine the finer nuances of the plot by the actor’s body language. 

An odd hobby I will admit. Not a bad one, though. While doing this I gradually came to the conclusion that the film easily ranks with “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” “Personal Services” and “Just like a Woman” as among the very best of trannie cinema, and also as one of my favourite films.

The film is now available on Amazon. Not a word of being in Italian. Guess I’ll be buying it, again. I wonder if knowing what the actors are actually saying will improve it? I think so. 

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