Reviews

Princesa is a movie about a prostitute from Brazil that flies to Italy to work and earn enough money to become a "normal woman". She fantasizes a normal life that frees her from the world of prostitution and being a woman trapped inside of a mans body. Compared to the other prostitutes in the movie, she is filled with hope and dreams - to live life as a lady.

After a humiliating experience, she meets a man that wants to take her out on a date and treat her like a lady, just as she had dreamed. However she does not easily give in completely, but he lets her know how passionate and in love he is with her and she finally accepts that she is in love as well. Her friends however tell her that the man she has fallen in love with is just gay and wants to spend time with her for fun and her suspicion leads her to feel uneasy around him. However from every scene we can tell that this man is completely head over heals in love with Princesa and even breaks it off with his wife and lives with Princesa and offers to pay for the expensive sex changing surgery.

However in the end she cannot fully accept his love because she realizes she will never be a true woman, and offer him a baby that he has always dreamed of. She comes to understand that she cannot have the fairytale life that she had always dreamed of, and to live a normal life as a woman. This crushes her and brings her back into the sex industry.

Judging by other movies and documentaries, and comparing it to this movie, we can see why transgender girls have a tendency to go back into the sex industry - to afford the sex change and also because they cannot fit into other types of work. They are not accepted by society in this way. In the scenes were Princesa is glared by her boyfriends friends girlfriend shows how women are not even on her side. She cannot get the support from women in general. This movie really gave insight into how prostitution can damage someone emotionally.

In the opening scene there are pictures of the "perfect couple" in the newspapers, celebrating their anniversary of over twenty five years - which is a very long time. They must know each other inside out, every positives or negatives they might have. They live in a beautiful house, they have sweet children that are full of life and healthy. They seem to have everything in order and shows the fantasy like lifestyle of any couples future. However this story has one of the most shocking story lines I have ever seen in a movie. The husband has been hiding his true identity this whole time and confesses that he is a transgender woman, trapped inside of a mans body. This is highly shocking and the wife cannot accept this at first.

Her reaction to his confession, although it is violent and cruel, it is definitely understanding. After being with the man for so long, she was completely convinced that she knew everything there is to know about him. She feels as if she has been lied to through out the whole relationship and her life is falling apart. Her gradual acceptance is also heartfelt and warm, as we see her suffering yet trying desperately to understand her husbands destiny, especially after witnessing him trying to commit suicide from the pressure he could not deal with anymore.

This movie showed how natural it was for person to become transgender, and that it is not something they choose for themselves. Everyone is born with a gender, and in this case the physical aspect and the mental aspect were switched, and mismatched. How the wife, his co- worker, his boss all reacted show how real life society would react to this kind of situation. People are not educated to understand there are "different" types of people, and that they are normal in their own way. We are educated to believe that it is an abnormality, a disease, and a disorder instead of trying to reach out and understand their situation. The bullying that the main character experienced in his manly, work place also reflect on the amount of rejection society has towards indifferences.

However we see that the unconditional love of the wife and the daughter, and gradually the son after some time, reveal that all the husband needed was support to get rid of all the anxieties he had been feeling. The indifferences did not change a person, it actually made the people around him more open minded and accepting to differences between people. This movie really opened up my world as well and helped me see something that I was taught was a type of "retardation" as well. Watching this movie helped me realize that we need to learn to love and accept each others indifferences no matter how hard it is.

This was the first time I had watched a Thai movie, and I figured it was going to be a corny melo drama with not much depth to it. However this movie turned out to be the complete opposite. I was also surprised to see how the main character was not actually an actor, but real life thai kick boxer. The acting was truly believable and almost had me in tears through out the movie.

What I found really interesting to see was how the people of Thailand was not accepting of transgendered people and gays. I always imagined Thailand to be one of the only countries that did not have biased views on different sexualities and open to transvestites/ transgendered people. Therefore it was shocking to see how the main character had to deal with the harassment as he grew up to become a kick boxer.

The movie filmed kick boxing in a beautiful, artistic way. Although I imagined it to be an aggressive, violent, cruel sport, the movie showed kick boxing to be a choreographed, stylized art instead. The scene where the main character wakes up early to peak at the practices done by the chosen, high level kick boxers was shot beautifully. The use of light from the back, making the fighters figures look more like shadows was great and intesified the story.

Overall this movie was a heartbreaking, touching movie that really moved me and helped me understand how biased our culture is. There is no such thing as "normal", even the ones that fit in that category have a difficult time trying to achieve that state of "normality". This movie helped me see that the education and religion needs to be adjusted so that everybody can live comfortably in their own body and their sexuality.

The movie explored the lifestyle of a transsexual and the discrimination they have to suffer through. The only thing that really confused me was the difference between a transvestite and a transgendered person. Because in the beginning the main character seems to be fine with being a man during the day, and a woman at night - however gradually see that more of his time is dedicated to being a woman and less a man.

I thought the main character's acting was great since it must have been such a difficult role to play. He was a beautiful man which made it easier as an audience to watch him transform into a woman and sympathize over his situation. What I found really interesting was how the sex was performed differently, at first when he is having sex as a man he is aggressive and wild however he is not satisfied. When he confesses that he is a transvestite, the sex is completely different - he is having sex in a more sweet, slow, girly way. That had a great impact on me when I was watching the movie.

When we see her (?) walking into the office building, near the end I thought I had figured out the ending completely. I thought that he was going to walk in and let everyone know who he was, but the slight twist was very interesting and caught my attention until the very end. It was a bit corny at times but it was definitely a great movie to open up your thoughts on transvestites/transgendered people.

The French Twist makes it believable that a straight person can "suddenly" change their sexuality, or how many people may not even know their own sexuality until they experience it for themselves. I really liked how sexuality whether it was lesbian or gay, was portrayed as something very natural and not forced.

This movie is filled with many surprises and twists that keep the audience excited till the very end. What I found really surprising and interesting about the plot was how sexuality was portrayed through Loli's attraction to Marijo rather than her husband. She is a neglected housewife and her husband makes her unappreciated. This scenario allows Marijo to enter and start the magical relationship between her and Loli. Loli has thought she was straight her whole life which we can tell when she encounters Marijo for the first time. This is evident when she looks very awkward whenever Marijo mentions about her past relationships with women. However after a few drinks the supposedly straight housewife is head over heals for another woman. It was before she even found out about her husbands promiscuity that she was already attracted to Marijo which showed it was not something she did to get back at her husband, but out of pure love.

Although the story gradually becomes ridiculous with relationships overlapping each other and each character goes chaotic with their emotions - it does a great job keeping the audience nervous and excited for the outcome. However I personally believe this movie worked because it was done in Europe, and that America would not be open to these ideas. This might explain why it is Rated R in America whilst anybody any age can watch it in Europe. I think many Americans would be thrown off by the idea of lesbians having a true, honest relationship because they prefer "fairy-tale" lesbians, that only happen between drunk straight women at bars. Lesbians are not something American ideals truly consider or believe is real. The reason America would rate this R is not because of the sex scenes but more so because of the "morality" that is against what is considered "normal", or what they aim to be seen as "normal".

I would not say this movie is a master-piece, but it is definitely a movie that broadens the way of hard headed people that are anti-homosexuality. I consider this to be a cute chick-flick for open minded people, or to make people more open minded.