Dir: Beatriz Flores Silva. Belg-Uru-Sp-Cuba. 97mins.

This ambitious Uruguayan tragi-comedy took its home box office by storm last year, as well as gleaning the top prize at Spain's Iberoamerican Film Festival in November. Uruguay's first-ever nomination to the foreign language Oscar, Tricky Life may also serve to re-ignite the country's struggling film industry, where just a handful of films have been made in the last decade. Based loosely on the true story of a woman who falls victim to an illegal prostitution ring in Europe, it has already registered 135,000 admissions in its first 15 weeks. International viewers may identify less with the subject matter but this lively effort deserves a wider release. It should also help jumpstart the career of talented star Mariana Santangelo, who is present in nearly every scene and infuses lead character Elisa with an artful blend of toughness and vulnerability.

Struggling to support her two young sons and save enough money to open a beauty salon in Montevideo with her best friend Lulu (the likeable Fantoni), lead character Elisa turns to prostitution. This is portrayed not as a desperate act but rather as a valid option for a young woman in modern Uruguay. A budding romance with pimp Placido (a solid Silvestre) leads Elisa to relocate with Lulu to Barcelona dreaming of making it rich. But life in Spain as an illegal immigrant working the streets is rougher than expected and a friendly police officer (Spain's Linuesa) proves Elisa's only hope for escape from the increasingly sinister Placido and his trafficking cohorts.

Working from an evenly-paced script, director and lead writer Beatriz Flores Silva intones the tale with a hopefulness despite her clear social agenda. Early scenes may feel too glib, threatening to undermine the seriousness of the material and contrasting too sharply with the tragic melodrama to come. Elisa's character also seems more like a carefree college graduate than a struggling mother of two forced to prostitute herself, although it may be Flores Silva's intention to show how average women without alternatives are drawn into perilous situations.

Still, there is little average about Elisa, who is conceived as sweet, hardworking, dedicated to her friends and sons and - like so many silver screen prostitutes before her, Pretty Woman's Julia Roberts at the fore - movie star beautiful. In the end, and despite the messy affairs she walks into, Elisa becomes a hero. The character's perfection detracts from the story's credibility, but not enough to make the tale less engaging or Santangelo's performance less captivating.

Prod cos: BFS Producciones
Int'l sales: Bavaria Film International
Prods: Hubert Toint, Beatriz Flores Silva, Stefan Schmitz.
Scr: Beatriz Flores Silva, Janos J Kovacsi, adapted from the novel The Serpents Egg by Maria Urruzola
DoP: Francisco Gozon
Ed: Marie-Helene Dozo, Daniel Marquez
Music: Carlos da Silveira
Main cast: Mariana Santangelo, Silvestre, Josep Linuesa, Andrea Fantoni, Fermi Herrero, Marta Gularte