The film's title refers to the length of the penis on Marieta/Adolfo (Mónica Cervera), a transvestite prostitute in Madrid saving money for a sex change operation. While Marieta’s life is miserable, during her dreams she escapes into flamboyant musical numbers in which she's the singing and dancing star. Prostitutes in Madrid don't get paid that much, so she's having difficulty raising the money for the surgery. To make things worse, she's also a narcoleptic, dozing off to star in her very own dreamed-up Technicolor musical spectaculars.
Marieta lives in a run-down apartment complex with her best friend Tomás (Miguel O'Dogherty). Whenever she builds up her savings, Tomás finds ways to spend, lose, or cost her those funds. Most of the building is inhabited by women who shout obscenities to each other through the stairwells, but Marieta finds comfort in her friend Berta (Concha Galán), who's involved in unspecified shady dealings, and won't tell Marieta what they are. While Berta is at work, Marieta looks after Berta's son Paulito (Richard Shaw).
Marieta takes a job as a railroad station cleaner, but falls alseep on the job and is fired. But in the meantime she thinks she's found love in hunky fruit packer Raúl (Pablo Puyol), with whom she embarks on an intense sexual relationship. Unfortunately for Marieta, there's one problem--he loves her 8 inch appendage, so Marieta is placed in a position of whether to choose true love over her life long dream of becoming a woman.
While "20 Centímetros" is baudy and irreverent in spots and provides the occasional laugh, there's not much of a plot and most of the film aimlessly wanders through Marietta's life. She screams at Tomás and endures his insults, she talks with the other girls she works with about her surgery, has a couple of steamy encounters with Raúl, and bides her time until she can afford the operation.
The dance numbers aren't very good. Some dancers are good, but the chorography is not, and because Cervera can't sing that well, she and the musical numbers grow tiresome and slow down the pacing which stops the story from progressing as quickly as it should. On the positive side, the film shows the gritty street-wise existence of prostitutes, along with their hopes, dreams and disappointments.
This brash, lively mixture of dark comedy, light drama and musical performance is quirky, meandering, and odd. However we know from the outset that Marieta is being played by a woman, spoiling the authenticity. Ricardo de Gracia composed the incidental music. The other music is mostly Spanish and American pop songs. Ramón Salazar wrote the screenplay and directed. In Spanish with English subtitles. The English title is "20 Centimetres".
