GERMANY: Singer and actress Marianne Faithfull shines as grandmother-turned-sex worker in Berlin Film Festival contender "Irina Palm".

The singer and actress Marianne Faithfull shines as grandmother-turned-sex worker in Berlin Film Festival contender "Irina Palm". The singer and actress Marianne Faithfull shone on Tuesday (February 13) as she attended the gala screening of "Irina Palm" in which she as plays a grandmother turned sex worker. Faithfull plays a grandmother in dire straights who becomes a sex worker in London's seedy Soho, in a touching yet hilarious movie that has lit up a hitherto subdued Berlin film festival. "Irina Palm" follows Maggie, played by Faithfull, from the side of her sick grandson's hospital bed to a sex shop where, desperate to pay for the boy's medical treatment abroad, she accepts a job where her smooth-skinned hands are a key asset. Taught by a younger woman, she learns to service clients who stand on the other side of a wall with a hole in it where they can be heard but not seen. So legendary is her technique that queues of customers begin to form, a rival club seeks to poach her and Maggie sardonically calls herself "the wanking widow". She also suffers from a condition her colleagues refer to as "penis elbow". Much of the comedy derives from the horror etched on Faithfull's face as she goes to work, and the reaction of her straight-laced circle of friends when they discover what Maggie has been up to during the day. But it is also a moving film about how far people go for their loved ones, and where, if anywhere, we should stop, to do the right thing. Faithfull, an icon of the "swinging sixties" when she dated Mick Jagger and became a pop star in her teens, announced in November that she had recovered from breast cancer, and would start a postponed music tour in March. Asked whether she would do more acting following "Irina Palm", she replied: "I do get offered a lot of rubbish (film work), and I turn it down." Following a breast cancer scare, Faithfull said she was back on form now. German-born director Sam Garbarski had originally intended to set the story in Brussels, but when London was proposed to him as an alternative setting, he changed his plans. He cast Belgrade-born Miki Manojlovic as the sleazy sex club owner who must explain to Maggie that being a hostess did not mean "making tea and clearing up", as she initially assumed. But the two gradually form an unlikely friendship during Maggie's race against time to raise enough money before her grandson becomes too ill to travel for treatment. "Irina Palm" was the 13th of 22 films in the main competition in Berlin, and has been the most popular among journalists so far. The reception to the other entries screened so far has been generally muted.

ITN Source | February 13, 2007

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