A brothel full of failed lives meets a woman who might be royalty—or ruin.
In a seedy brothel, their frustrations parade: A poet who has never published, a revolutionary who came late to history, a provocative angel, a bureaucrat with delusions of a dancer, a greedy Chinese man and his timorous wife, Monica, a prostitute with low professional esteem, a group of prostitutes of dubious sensuality and, finally, a priest with a stench of holiness and another with redeeming instincts. But a stranger with the air of a princess appears, and upsets the balance of the establishment.
Production
Single brothel set feels like a suffocating theatrical stage.
Acting
Fernando Luján's holy stench practically wafts through the screen.
Director
Arturo Ripstein
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Ripstein adapted this from his own father's play, making it a twisted family inheritance of Mexican theatrical melodrama.
The single claustrophobic set was built in an actual abandoned brothel in Mexico City. Method production design.
MX
ES
