La Corona 2008

The formidable contestants in the beauty contest covered in Amanda Michel (Double Dare) and Isabel Vega’s Oscar-nominated La Corona represent cellblocks, not cities. Despite the personal misgivings of its warden, every year the administration of Colombia’s largest women’s penitentiary allows the prisoners to participate in a prison-wide beauty pageant. Celebrity judges are brought in, national media cover the event, evening gowns are donated, and the most glamorous inmates – here a contract killer, a guerilla fighter and a thief – are taught to how to dance, walk, and talk like the television divas they might prefer to be. Revealing a great deal about the survival strategies of its memorable array of femmes fatales in its brief running time, La Corona proves to be a startling encounter. — BG