A woman prays in the woods. A bright bubblegum pink wig frames her closed eyes as she wishes for good clients, rustling leaves turned choir, sprawling branches turned pew. The forest is her office — or at least half of it. The other half is the bustling road a few meters away, where she parades to and fro with contagious confidence, her phone in one hand as the other flags down possible customers.
READ MORE: Venice Film Festival Preview: 16 Must-See Films To Watch
The woman in question is the titular character, Princess (Glory Kevin), a Nigerian sex worker living in Italy. Princess is one of many victims of the widespread epidemic of sex trafficking of Nigerian women in Italy, brought to the country by madams who prey on their aspirations of a better life. Upon arrival, the girls are forced to work the streets for years until they pay an ever-growing, unpayable debt, which starts with travel and smuggling costs. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), the arm of the United Nations dedicated to providing services and advice concerning migration and migrants, estimates these debts to vary between 40 and 100 thousand dollars.
At a rate of 10 euros for a blowjob and 30 for full intercourse, it would take Princess all the years of her youth to fill up this gaping jar. Yet, every morning she makes her way to the woods, where towering trees conceal her illegal practices from the Carabinieri. This daily routine sustains the majority of Roberto De Paolis’ sophomore film, which opens the Orizzonti strand of the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Men come and go, wandering amongst the forest. Some actively seek company; others simply pass by. To Princess, their origins are of little matter. She cares only for the ruffled bills in their pockets, negotiating gigs and rates, denied the luxury of declining direly needed cash.
Through this pattern, Princess is presented as a woodland creature, at once sheltered and exposed, as if in a twisted contemporary passage of ‘Midsummer’s Night Dream. The hands that frantically tap the phone screen are the same ones that grasp the fleeting stability of old branches as men grunt and thrust. The guttural noises of strangers intertwined with the tweeting of birds, the stirring of dirt. Within the wild, she transforms, dissociation a precious coping mechanism. Her existence outside of this environment is rarely shown — she lives in a makeshift camp with other sex workers, the relationship between the women at once protective and combative, competition rapidly corrupting camaraderie.
Paolis discovered lead actress Glory Kevin while scouting Italian streets (the same technique was employed to cast all other sex workers featured in the film, with the only professional actors being the clients), and Princess was adapted to reflect Kevin’s personal experiences as a Nigerian sex worker in Italy. The actress and the director worked together on the script, with Kevin free to shape her character to reach the most faithful representation of her personal journey. This collaborative process fosters a raw, stirring turn from the first-time performer. Kevin’s natural mannerisms are the film’s greatest triumph, from the cadence of her speech — which blends Nigerian dialects, English, and Italian – to the way in which she drinks in her surroundings while protectively blocking all that does not serve her, her eyes sharply selective.
The magnetic authenticity of the performances is only diluted by a romantic subplot — as is often the case with narratives surrounding sex work, particularly those regarding a female sex worker. A desperate attempt to establish a relationship between Princess and a good-hearted client (Lino Musella) tips the scale from competent character study slash political commentary to arthouse ‘Pretty Woman,’ a left turn that bitters this earnest effort. Nonetheless, there is still much to appreciate in Roberto De Paolis’ sincere approach to an often impenetrable subject. [B]
Follow along with all our coverage of the 2022 Venice Film Festival.
