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Our Lady of the Assassins (La virgen de los sicarios)
Paramount // R // March 26, 2002
List Price: $29.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Barbet Schroeder, the director of Our Lady of the Assassins (original title: La virgen de los sicarios) is probably best known for his feature films Single White Female and Reversal of Fortune. But in addition to his "Hollywood hits," the internationally-known director has directed and produced many examples of what can be called independent filmmaking. Our Lady of the Assassins is clearly on the "independent" side of the scale, as Barbet takes on a generous handful of provocative and disturbing issues in a film with a distinctive visual and narrative feel.
Our Lady of the Assassins is a slice of life from modern-day Columbia, in a once-small town that's now a big city torn to pieces gang warfare, drugs, and murder. Fireworks are regularly seen in the sky, whenever one of the drug cartels is celebrating having gotten a shipment of cocaine through to the United States; on a nearby cliff, a posted sign that reads "Dumping of corpses prohibited" is blatantly ignored. Into this disturbing and disturbed environment comes the aging, world-weary author Fernando (Germán Jaramillo), who has returned to the place of his childhood with no particular plans other than satisfying his nostalgia by exploring the city and finding his old haunts. Nonetheless, Fernando is sufficiently appreciative of the pleasures of the body that he allows himself to be drawn into the gay scene of an old friend, and picks up a new lover: the youthful Alexis (Anderson Ballesteros).
By choosing Fernando as the main viewpoint character, director Schroeder is able to highlight the effects of the brutal combination of poverty and the culture of drugs and violence on the people of the city. Though Fernando avows that he has come home merely to die, by throwing himself into pleasure without a thought for the future, he ends up with a strong connection to life, through his young lover Alexis.
Our Lady of the Assassins is a story that asserts that "people can get used to anything"... or can they? Alexis and the other young hoodlums are accustomed to their lives in the city and to the brutality of casual, meaningless killing; but in accepting their lives, they have also accepted a tremendously circumscribed life, in which physical sensation and the acquisition of a few material goods mark the high point of a life that could (and often does) come to an abrupt end in the kill-and-be-killed life of the streets.
The central figures in Our Lady of the Assassins are Fernando and Alexis, though there's an assortment of secondary characters as well. Though the acting is reasonably good, the characters are not really presented in much depth; for instance, apart from Alexis' youth, there's not much indication of what draws Fernando to him. Perhaps the point in this case is that in the long term, this relationship wouldn't last, but Fernando has abandoned all thought of the long term, preferring to live only in the moment. As this hints, there's a certain depth to the character of Fernando, though it's not really explored: Our Lady of the Assassins is much more a portrait of a city than of any particular character.
Video
The DVD transfer of Our Lady of the Assassins is fairly polished, with one glaring exception that I'll get to in a minute. The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and it is anamorphically enhanced. The picture is very clean and sharp; there's no noise and almost no edge enhancement or print flaws.
Our Lady of the Assassins has a very television-like look to it, due to the manner in which it has been filmed. Everything in any given scene is always in focus, unlike a more typical film image in which some areas of the picture are in focus and others are out of focus, giving more of a sense of distance and perspective. The visuals of this film thus have an odd quality and somewhat off-putting quality to them, but it's part of the artistic choice of the film and not a question of image quality.
The major flaw in the transfer is the appalling fact that the English subtitles are burned-in, and thus there is no option to view the film without the subtitles. Especially in a film that's obviously been prepared for DVD with some care, with anamorphic widescreen and 5.1 sound, it's completely shoddy workmanship to have non-removable subtitles. If it hadn't been for this defect, I would have given the video quality 4 stars.
Audio
I was impressed to find that the DVD includes a Spanish Dolby 5.1 track as well as a Spanish Dolby 2.0 track. While the 5.1 soundtrack makes very little use of the back channels, it offers dialogue that's clean and clear, with music that's well-balanced with the other audio elements.
Extras
We're looking at a bare-bones disc here, with no special features. The menus are pretty straightforward to use. I'll note here, for anyone who's just skimming the review, that the "English subtitles" listed as a special feature on the DVD case are in fact burned-in.
Final thoughts
Our Lady of the Assassins isn't a movie for everyone, which puts it in that problematic area between the "rent it" and the "recommended" categories. I felt that the film was worth watching, but lacked a certain something to make it worth repeat viewing; possibly a little more polish, possibly a little stronger narrative. What Our Lady of the Assassins does successfully is to offer a glimpse of another way of life, one that's not presented with a sugar coating or a cut-and-dried moral tacked on to the ending.
Our Lady of the Assassins is a slice of life from modern-day Columbia, in a once-small town that's now a big city torn to pieces gang warfare, drugs, and murder. Fireworks are regularly seen in the sky, whenever one of the drug cartels is celebrating having gotten a shipment of cocaine through to the United States; on a nearby cliff, a posted sign that reads "Dumping of corpses prohibited" is blatantly ignored. Into this disturbing and disturbed environment comes the aging, world-weary author Fernando (Germán Jaramillo), who has returned to the place of his childhood with no particular plans other than satisfying his nostalgia by exploring the city and finding his old haunts. Nonetheless, Fernando is sufficiently appreciative of the pleasures of the body that he allows himself to be drawn into the gay scene of an old friend, and picks up a new lover: the youthful Alexis (Anderson Ballesteros).
By choosing Fernando as the main viewpoint character, director Schroeder is able to highlight the effects of the brutal combination of poverty and the culture of drugs and violence on the people of the city. Though Fernando avows that he has come home merely to die, by throwing himself into pleasure without a thought for the future, he ends up with a strong connection to life, through his young lover Alexis.
Our Lady of the Assassins is a story that asserts that "people can get used to anything"... or can they? Alexis and the other young hoodlums are accustomed to their lives in the city and to the brutality of casual, meaningless killing; but in accepting their lives, they have also accepted a tremendously circumscribed life, in which physical sensation and the acquisition of a few material goods mark the high point of a life that could (and often does) come to an abrupt end in the kill-and-be-killed life of the streets.
The central figures in Our Lady of the Assassins are Fernando and Alexis, though there's an assortment of secondary characters as well. Though the acting is reasonably good, the characters are not really presented in much depth; for instance, apart from Alexis' youth, there's not much indication of what draws Fernando to him. Perhaps the point in this case is that in the long term, this relationship wouldn't last, but Fernando has abandoned all thought of the long term, preferring to live only in the moment. As this hints, there's a certain depth to the character of Fernando, though it's not really explored: Our Lady of the Assassins is much more a portrait of a city than of any particular character.
Video
The DVD transfer of Our Lady of the Assassins is fairly polished, with one glaring exception that I'll get to in a minute. The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and it is anamorphically enhanced. The picture is very clean and sharp; there's no noise and almost no edge enhancement or print flaws.
Our Lady of the Assassins has a very television-like look to it, due to the manner in which it has been filmed. Everything in any given scene is always in focus, unlike a more typical film image in which some areas of the picture are in focus and others are out of focus, giving more of a sense of distance and perspective. The visuals of this film thus have an odd quality and somewhat off-putting quality to them, but it's part of the artistic choice of the film and not a question of image quality.
The major flaw in the transfer is the appalling fact that the English subtitles are burned-in, and thus there is no option to view the film without the subtitles. Especially in a film that's obviously been prepared for DVD with some care, with anamorphic widescreen and 5.1 sound, it's completely shoddy workmanship to have non-removable subtitles. If it hadn't been for this defect, I would have given the video quality 4 stars.
Audio
I was impressed to find that the DVD includes a Spanish Dolby 5.1 track as well as a Spanish Dolby 2.0 track. While the 5.1 soundtrack makes very little use of the back channels, it offers dialogue that's clean and clear, with music that's well-balanced with the other audio elements.
Extras
We're looking at a bare-bones disc here, with no special features. The menus are pretty straightforward to use. I'll note here, for anyone who's just skimming the review, that the "English subtitles" listed as a special feature on the DVD case are in fact burned-in.
Final thoughts
Our Lady of the Assassins isn't a movie for everyone, which puts it in that problematic area between the "rent it" and the "recommended" categories. I felt that the film was worth watching, but lacked a certain something to make it worth repeat viewing; possibly a little more polish, possibly a little stronger narrative. What Our Lady of the Assassins does successfully is to offer a glimpse of another way of life, one that's not presented with a sugar coating or a cut-and-dried moral tacked on to the ending.
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