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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