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GUNFIRE
DROWNS OUT THE PLATITUDES OF POLITICIANS IN COLOMBIA
Our Lady of the Assassins (La Virgen
de los Sicarios) focuses on Fernando (played by Germán
Jaramillo) , who was born in Medellín, Colombia, when
it was a peaceful if boring farming community. His literary
talents took him to Europe, where presumably he lived a full
life but we are left to infer that he contracted AIDS. Now,
in his late 50s, he returns to the town of his birth to die,
or so he confesses to Alexis (played by Anderson Ballesteros),
a teenage prostitute presented to him by a longtime friend
Alfonso (played by Manuel Busquets) as he is greeted upon
entering the latter’s apartment. All Fernando’s
relatives are dead, so he has come to take possession of his
inheritance, a sparsely furnished condo with a sweeping view
of the city. But Medellín has changed a lot since he
left, and during much of the film he revisits the places that
he frequented as a boy. Alexis, who has only known the city
as a drug metropolis of more than one million inhabitants,
not only provides male companionship but also becomes his
guide to the newer local customs. One just custom is to pull
out a Baretta and "off" those who are disliked for
whatever reason in the expectation that there are so many
corpses and killings that police have no interest or time
in tracking down the perpetrators. Indeed, Alexis first casually
bumps off a boy who played drums annoyingly every night in
an adjacent apartment. He next plugs a cab driver who comes
after Fernando with a tire iron because he complained that
the music in the taxi was too loud. Fernando watches as Alexis
kills two pairs of assailants on motorbikes who evidently
have a contract on his life, but a third pair finishes him
off. Fernando then goes to Alexis’s home uphill from
Medellín to provide some cash for his family but soon
takes up with Wilmar (played by Juan David Restrepo), another
teenage boy, whom he later learns is the one who killed Alexis
because Alexis killed his brother, but in due course Wilmar
is offed, and Fernando decides to leave the madness of Medellín
as the film ends. Directed by Barbet Schroeder, Our
Lady of the Assassins is based on a semiautobiographical
novel, La Virgen de los Sicarios (1994), by Fernando
Vallejo. The movie was filmed in Medellín amid threats
of death, kidnapping, and theft; the teenagers were not professional
actors, lending authenticity to the argot and story, as Pablo
Escobar trained teenagers to be crack shots. The dialog is
as filled with quotable epigrams as the streets are with lawlessness
and the televised speeches of the politicians contain balderdash.
Guntoting is normal, deaths bring little attention, and fireworks
are displayed on the news that another shipment of cocaine
has successfully entered the United States. For Colombians,
the film contained humor and ironies that will be missed by
other viewers, but some Colombians objected to the stark reality
captured on the screen, evidently preferring not to deal with
the issues raised. Revealing everyday life in Medellín,
juxtaposing poverty with affluence in a city where the main
cathedral is a crackhouse, the Political Film Society has
nominated Our Lady of the Assassins as best
film exposé of the year. MH
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COLUMBINE
DELAYS A FILM THAT PERHAPS EXPLAINS THE ATMOSPHERE FOR THE
MASSACRE
 O,
based on Shakespeare’s Othello with some passages from
the Verdi opera, takes place in Palmetto Grove Academy, a
prep school in Charleston, South Carolina. The Othello is
African American Odin James (played by Mekhi Phifer), a star
basketball player on scholarship who has attracted the romantic
attentions of an upper-class Desdemona named Desi Brable (played
by Julia Stiles). The wily Iago is Hugo Goulding (played by
Josh Hartnett), who wants the couple to break up, using weak-willed
Roger Rodriguez (played by Elden Henson), his Rodrigo. Hugo’s
father, Duke Goulding (played by Martin Sheen), is the coach
of the basketball team, which is in line for the state championship.
Michael Casio (played by Andrew Keegan), also on the basketball
team, is the boyfriend of Desi’s dormmate Emily (played
by Rain Phoenix) but would doubtless be Desi’s boyfriend
if Odin had not captured her heart. After Hugo has Roger do
his dirty work, resulting in the suspension of Michael from
the team, Hugo puts ideas into Odin’s head that Michael
is having sex with Desi. Hugo swaps an expensive watch at
a pawnshop for a gun, and the inevitable tragic deaths occur.
O, directed by Tim Blake Nelson, may serve
as a perceptive explanation for contemporary teenage interpersonal
intrigue, racism, premarital sex, suicide, and violence, but
the lesson is so apropos that the film was pulled from distribution
in the wake of the Columbine massacre; Miramax sold the rights
to Lions Gate, which held out until an appropriate quiet moment,
Labor Day weekend 2001. MH
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