Aurelio Grimaldi
Le Buttane

Every day walking that same road. Every single day stepping on those same stones, looking for the same footprints, recognizing them among many, without running the risk of forgetting them and struggling to find them again. But who could forget those traces? Especially for those who walk the same path or on the same floor. They can be seen with the naked eye.

Who are Orlanda, Minuccia, Blu Blu, Veronica, Liuccia "Bonuccia"? They are stage names. Released from a dismal fantasy or suggested by a client with poetic ambitions, searching for lost pink apostrophes to place somewhere. And who is Kim, the transgender? Or Maurizio the unsuspecting gay professor? Poor lovers. Lost souls forced to wander in a dark world made of newspaper ads and arbitrarily indiscreet eyes.

Souls forced to count every time their vast fields have been plowed by anonymous farmers. Not even a love song manages to ease the stiffness of a state of mind wounded too many times. Just the time for a touch-up, a swipe of cheap makeup or lipstick. They can't kiss me anyway because I won't allow it and at least it remains faithful to me all day long. That white skin veiled by stockings worn solely to entice the versatile beast. That multifaceted animal that changes forms in a few minutes. Once it's clean, groomed, another time maybe not. It can take forms that paradoxically make me fall in love. If only temporarily, at least. But most of the time it isn't like that. How many times do I swallow heavy air. Those soft lumps sticking to my pearl-colored thighs, as someone would say. The time to stretch those muscles repeatedly, intensely rubbed and it has already changed form. Another one again. Another one again.

And those forced “yessss,” like a redundant, tired, sighed interruption to silence. How it pains me to repeat that deceitful syllable. Only this way do these fools remain happy. They too know I'm faking but I don't care. I'm forced to drag that dead feeling, to mask the disgust, otherwise, I risk them not coming back anymore. In both senses. And I need the money to live.

Orlanda is the hardest, perhaps a bit racist but possibly the most desired. She also has a protector who bothers her continuously. With Orlanda, you have to show the big bills right away and above all, you have to be clean. Otherwise, an oppressive manual labor is on the cards. It will be exactly an inferior who saves her from the pimp's clutches. Kim doesn't have all the cutlery but can offer you much more than what a woman can. He knows the spots to hit with his tongue. And Maurizio is content to caress skin similar to his own, the same odor, the same sigh, the same tuft of messy hair or fur. Liuccia is daring, spontaneous. She takes risks. How many risks these unfortunate mothers take. How many rosaries they count hoping the next wanderer isn't a murderer. How many tears they will cry thinking of that child in the orphanage or touching their incisors that have had to taste dusty greasy leather, lying on the cold paving of a land burned by tires.

Why do they do it, the whores, or vulgarly pulle, as if the term whore wasn't enough to crush them at the bottom of humanity. Those of Grimaldi have a soul, in many cases a big heart and in others, they are tired without being able to go elsewhere. His, the whores, don’t take shortcuts. They won’t earn merits or accolades. They’ll keep going, continuing to be plowed by those anonymous plows until they bleed. Until the blood turns into tears. Not even at Christmas can they smile, unless they are drunk and in front of a poor panettone nibbled at amid a rotten love song yelled out in front of a rubber dildo.

Grimaldi's work, revised and corrected based on a book he wrote, as always is provocative and not by chance, many at Cannes turned up their nose. The courage is great and the direction exists but once again ends up on the scaffold nailed by the critics' arrows, in a Saint Sebastian manner. Maurizio Calvesi gives us another splendid black and white photography. A black and white I would dare to define as amniotic, as if wanting to birth a monster that tears through every sequence. Little music, some noise. It is futile to proclaim the already recognized skill of Ida Di Benedetto, the challenging, Guia Jelo, the spontaneous, and Lucia Sardo, the fiery. Paola Pace is brilliant.

What women of steel, the whores...