User Reviews

The film is a sad tale of women and their trails that have brought them together as high class dinner show escorts and entertainers in an upscale nightclub. They all have their own tragic stories and the desire to escape their lives. The film captures the fashion of the era very well and the acting of some of the female characters is very good in parts. The dialog is very pointed at times and sarcasm abounds from the pessimistic outlook the women carry. There are some very emotional and beautiful torch songs sung in the film by some of the women and plenty of music as performed in the nightclub. Most of the movie centers on the events of a certain day and evening from various stories of people's lives, sort of like a New Years Eve drama. The end is a twist that is not expected as far as how the women are freed from their tyrannical boss who runs the nightclub.

1951 -- 2011. Sixty years have gone by since this movie was produced. During that time many things have changed in the world, among them, women rights. Nowadays all the characters behavior in this movie seems from another planet.

To us, their understanding of morals is totally alien, but, if we place ourselves mentally into that frame of reference, this picture is extremely enjoyable. Five women, young and beautiful, are placed by bad turns in their lives to work as prostitutes in a high class boite de nuit (the pinnacle of sin at the time) and one wonders why was that so bad and shameful, because from beginning to end of the movie those five women are coiffed, made up, dressed, jeweled and probably perfumed to death in the most exquisite way.

They seem to live entirely for pleasure! The script is excellent, it clearly describes each of their unfortunate past and present (those gowns and jewels!) and the five destinies are shown to the bitter end in punctilious detail. A TV soap opera before TV soap operas. There are a couple of lines so witty and unexpected that literally floored me, I applauded them!!! (It's all right, I was watching the movie at home on "You Tube").

There is a monologue at a table of the night club done by the one girl condemned by cancer (she has three months to live) where the camera takes the place of one seating in front of her at that table and she makes this speech absolutely flawless, incredible; one must see this movie just to witness that scene, maybe the best scene of the whole movie.

Very, very entertaining film indeed. Again, forget about our current moral standards and remember that at that time Mexican society was practically ruled by the church and women were supposed to be housewives and nothing else (virgin if possible at the time of their marriage with the first and only man ever to have known them) so, if you can accept that type of philosophy, go ahead and watch this movie, a totally enjoyable production.