"Our Lady of the Assassins"
Writer Fernando Vallejo (German Jaramillo) comes home to the tumultuous city of Medellin, Colombia after 30 years of absence. At a gay brothel run by an old friend he meets Alexis (Anderson Ballesteros), a teenaged boy toy who Fernando immediately takes a liking to. The boy moves into the older man's sparsely furnished apartment and the two explore the vibrancy and the violence of the city made infamous by drug trafficking in "Our Lady of the Assassins."
Fernando, as close as I can figure, is a writer of some fame and fortune returning home, as he puts it, to die. (Ambiguous and enigmatic are two words I would use to describe "Our Lady of the Assassins.") He teams up, at once, with pretty, young Alexis, a tough-minded street kid who fears nothing and packs a big gun - for his own protection, he says. The pair set off into the modern/old city of Medellin, now called Medello according to Alexis, to satisfy the boy's desire for rampant consumerism. Fernando buys an expensive stereo and any other trinkets that Alexis wants and, for a while, they have a relationship that borders on being father/son-like (except for the sex part). There is a price to pay for this time of bliss and the violence that clutches the citizens of Medellin will inevitably visit the couple.
Violent confrontation on the mean streets of city is a way life, especially if you are young, male and armed with a semi-automatic pistol - one gift Alexis and other boys ask for is a mini Uzi submachine gun, just to give you some perspective. Car jacking is a popular sport in town and Fernando watches as a guy who owns a car resists and is gunned down in cold blood by the 'jacker. Alexis, himself, is involved in one shooting after another as he protects himself from endless assaults from countless enemies on the street. With sudden death a real possibility for teenaged Colombian boys, the lives of the street kids burns brighter than for kids elsewhere, making the consumer ideology a thriving one in Medellin. Live fast and die young is the motto these kids live by.
Fernando is an enigma as a man returning home to a world that is completely different from the one he left so long ago. The rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the yoke put upon the country by the drug trade, the violence perpetrated by the country's rulers and, particularly, its youth all washes over Fernando but, apart from a frequently used look of melancholy, he seems unmoved by the events. (The man is humanized when he uses, and loses, Alexis's gun to put an injured dog out of its misery. You know that this is the film's pivotal scene and will color later events dramatically.)
The autobiographical screenplay, by Fernando Vallejo, keeps the central figure, the writer, at arm's length from the events around him, even when tragedy strikes. There are lessons to be learned here but they are muted by keeping the audience from embracing the man. Jaravillo is too much of an enigma and being an observer of his observer, I never embraced the character or cared about the lessons to be learned. Anderson Ballesteros, on the other hand, is quite charismatic as the cocky, violent Alexis who thinks nothing of gunning down a cabbie who threatens Fernando. His lack of concern for life, even his own, is conveyed in a professional manner by the young actor.
Barbet Schroeder, with lensing capably handled by Rodrigo Lalinde, uses high-definition digital video to capture the garish look of Medello, a city that was made modern on a foundation of illicit drugs. The utter believability of the violence, its sudden and final nature, that grip the city is palpably felt. I don't think that Schroeder is embellishing on the violence that routinely takes place and gives the film a realistic tenor. The tone of this part of the film put me in mind of the 1981 Brazilian film, "Pixote," an even grittier look at the street life of homeless kids in a violent urban arena.
"Our Lady of the Assassins" succeeds in taking you into the heart of Colombia and showing a violence-laden world that few will ever go to see. The main flaw is I never empathize, or even sympathize, with too enigmatic Fernando. I give it a B-.
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