Princess - SKINNYFEST 2

Most people spend their Christmas holidays indoors, gleefully combing the hair of their new My Little Pony collection. Sadly for the girl gang in Princess the West German slum where they reside is Mattel-free, their festive season instead being spent chain smoking and crunching the noses of strangers with their manicured fists. Katharina, a recent immigrant from Russia and nymphet Jenny are spending the day with their fellow delinquent Yvonne before she begins a jail term for a beating that went too far. Yvonne, however, decides to skip her sentence and go on the run leaving the others with difficult decisions to make.

From the outset there is one lingering problem. Unless European social welfare has overtaken the UK by light years, it is hard to believe that three German girls from housing projects would look and dress like pouting Top Shop models displaying the winter season collection. Plausibility is again stretched when the gang go out biffing poor innocents on the streets, the effect coming across less ASBO nightmares and more like a director's cut of a particularly feisty Avril Lavigne video. Grosskopf's taut camera work does go some way to redeeming the film, lingering over the dimly lit tower blocks to create a disconcertingly claustrophobic effect. The actors, when not out biffing, also produce strong performances, especially Irina Potapenko as Katharina but ultimately Princess provides too many unintentional laughs for its own good.