La virgen de los sicarios (2000)

Director:

Barbet Schroeder

Writers:

Fernando Vallejo (novel)
Fernando Vallejo (screenplay)

Release Date:

8 September 2000 (Italy)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Romance

Plot:

The tempestuous love story between Fernando, an older man who has recently returned to his crime-ridden drug capitol hometown of Medellin...

Plot Keywords:

Murder | Medellin Colombia | Drugs | Love | Violence

Awards:

3 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Germán Jaramillo	...	Fernando
Anderson Ballesteros	...	Alexis
Juan David Restrepo	...	Wilmar
Manuel Busquets	...	Alfonso
Wilmar Agudelo	...	Child Sniffing Glue
Juan Carlos Álvarez	...	4x4 Thief
Jairo Alzate	...	Taxi Driver Santa Domingo
Zulma Arango	...	Waitress
José Luis Bedoya	...	Taxi Sabaneta 1
Cenobia Cano	...	Alexis's Mother
Eduardo Carvajal	...	Taxi Driver Clinic
Olga Lucía Collazos	...	Pregnant Woman
Jorge A. Correa	...	Dead Man
Phanor Delgado	...	Taxi Driver with Machete
Albeiro Lopera	...	Punk

Also Known As:

La vierge des tueurs (France)
La virgen de los sicarios (Colombia)
Our Lady of the Assassins (International: English title)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong violence, language, sexuality and drug content.

Runtime:

101 min

Country:

Spain | France | Colombia

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Australia:MA (cable rating) | Argentina:18 | Chile:18 | France:-12 | Peru:18 | Portugal:M/16 | Spain:18 | Switzerland:16 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:16 (canton of Vaud) | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia

Company:

Canal+

Quotes:

Fernando: You can't live without sex. People go crazy without sex. Look how nutty the Pope's become. Spouting crap everywhere and kissing floors. Saying that homosexuality and all that is a sin. That's a sin? Having kids is a sin! There's no space left, the Planet will explode!

Soundtrack:

Fiesta de Negritos

Black magic realism

Occasionally venturing into dreamlike surrealism, the movie mostly hits you with a heavy dose of cinema verite. The movie is about the city of Medellin in the same way that Midnight Cowboy is about New York. The characters aren't dealing with the problem of staying human in a huge metropolis, but staying human in the midst of instability that verges on anarchy.

The effects of fifty years of civil war aggravated by narcotrafficking and the associated crime are shown in two ways, which are the central themes of the film: the shift from the old and traditional to the modern, and the loss of value that human life has suffered. The banality of the several killings in the movie drives home the second, and the explorations that Fernando and his two boyfriends (sequential, not simultaneous) take through the city show the first.

The movie is violent like the Godfather is violent: the killings are not gratuitous, they are there to make a point. As a document of life in an industrial Andean city which just happens to be the second city of the country poised to become the next Vietnam, or better said, the next El Salvador, La virgen de los sicarios is excellent. It is sophisticated in its writing and its photography. The characters are human and complex. It ought to be in far wider release than just one screen in the whole L.A. area - which happens to be on the West Side, where Spanish-speaking people typically don't live.