In Spanish with English subtitles
With Diana Peñalver, Josette Vidal, Fabiola Arace.
From the country that boasts over 600 beauty pageants each year comes 3 Beauties, a scathing satire of Venezuela’s fixation with beauty and its relation to social status. Perla is the single mother of two competitive daughters, products of her own unfulfilled childhood obsession to become a beauty queen, and a son who she completely ignores. As the years pass, Perla’s unlimited efforts to achieve her dream through her “two princesses” transforms everyone’s lives into a nightmare. Toddlers & Tiaras meets Pedro Almodóvar in this frantic, devious comedy.
Filmmaker may be available for a Q&A via Skype. Speaker fee: $300. Inquire at FILMCLUB@PRAGDA.COM
About the Director
Carlos Caridad Montero is a Venezuelan filmmaker graduated in the EICTV, Cuba. His short films have been screened in festivals such as Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, Mannheim and São Paulo. 3 Beauties is his first feature film. His next film will be Beyond Sillicon Valley, a documentary winner of Morelia Lab 2010 (Award for the best Latin American project) and winner of the ARTE award in Doc Buenos Aires 2011.
Press
“A satire skewing a hot-button Venezuela’s beauty pageant obsession, as plastic surgery rate as a hot-button topic around the world.” – John Hopewell, VARIETY
“3 Beauties’ is a laugh-out-loud gem!: Funny, bitingly insightful, and a pleasure from beginning to end” – Raymond Murray, Artsploitation Films in VARIETY
“Obsession with beauty and plastic surgery is a hot universal topic and this film depicts it with a strong intelligent sense of humor.” – Ida Martins, president of Media Luna in VARIETY
“What initially looks like a local dark comedy can easily be seen as an entertaining attack on the suffering and insecurity generated by the international beauty industry to serve its own ends… The film is taking a general look at our image-based culture.” – Jonathan Holland, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Notes on Film
The successful participation of Venezuela in beauty contests, has earned this small country the reputation as “the land of beautiful women” and has spread the idea that there is no more beautiful women than Venezuelans. The media have ensured that this vision is rooted in the psyche of Venezuelans. An unsettling dark comedy 3 Beauties doesn’t seek to be a pamphlet against this obsession but to provoke discussion.
Carlos Caridad Montero
