OUR LADY OF THE ASSASSINS
directed by Barbet Schroeder with GermᮠJaramillo and Anderson Ballesteros runs Sept. 21-27 at Egyptian
CONTRARY TO the recent flag-waving, cries for revenge, and choruses of “God Bless America” that swelled the nation’s chest last week, acts of violence only mean—have always meant—more acts of violence. Reversal of Fortune director Barbet Schroeder makes Our Lady an importantly unsettling film that dares to state the obvious: That it is only human feeling, not retaliation, that finally brings redemption.
Fernando (GermᮠJaramillo), an aging, weary gay writer, returns to his Colombian hometown in a willfully numbed state of hopelessness. With passive inevitability, he soon embarks on an affair with Alexis (Anderson Ballesteros, who is no actor but moves with heartbreaking assurance), a young, beautiful street tough with a penchant for gunning down anyone who even mildly upsets him. Together they roam the city, surrounded by a rising body count and the detritus of moral decay.
In what might be the dividing line for audience response, Schroeder holds back on emotion far longer than you may be willing to tolerate; the wry but unrelenting nihilism can send you out broken for the rest of the day. When tragedy finally reaches Fernando directly, Jaramillo’s sense of dignified repose starts to crack, and you wonder where he’s been all the time. The film isn’t surreal enough for us to accept the devastation as a metaphorical world.
Yet Fernando’s fatalistic reverie pulses with the throbbing sadness of Camus’ The Stranger. What at first feels misanthropic—”We’re a flowing river,” says Fernando, “a mirage of nothingness”—is soon revealed to be the lowest depth of despair. Our Lady carries the burden of all-encompassing grief, and demands that we shun both revenge and apathy in order to combat the sorrows—and embrace the joys—of the world.
