AFI FEST Report: Rosario Tijeras Review

Taking over for Todd and trying to keep up with the mad pace of film watching Peter is doing at AFI Fest here is another review from Peter Martin. Are you at least keeping yourself well hydrated Peter during this marathon of film viewing?

Ladies and gentlemen, go see ROSARIO TIJERAS. Just don't let her kiss you first.

Rosario, as fully, often nakedly embodied by Flora Martinez, is a hit woman for the Colombian drug cartel. Covered in blood in the opening moments of the film, she is rushed to a hospital by Antonio (Unax Ugalde). As she undergoes emergency surgery, flashbacks fill in her story.

Antonio's best friend Emilio (Manolo Cardona) makes eye contact with Rosario at a disco in Medillin, Colombia, in the 1980s, and it's lust at first sight. They tumble into bed together that first night, but Rosario makes Emilio promise that they won't talk about the past. And what a past it's been for Rosario: as a child she suffered sexual abuse from her stepfather; in her early teens she acquired her alias ("Rosario Tijeras" meaning literally "Rosary Scissors") when defending herself against the advances of another older man; in her late teens her brother offered her up as a lover to his mob boss.

Somewhere along the line she became a legendary assassin, though the how and why are left untold. She dresses in a very provocative fashion - all tight, revealing outfits - and instead of walking across a room, she vamps, wriggling her hips in a suggestive manner.

All of these scenes look gorgeously unreal, like a movie set, with fully saturated primary colors and nearly everything perfectly lit. (Pascal Marti was the director of cinematography.) Similarly, the well-chosen locations add a vibrant surface sheen, though we never feel the nitty gritty, the smell of the streets. Rosario's extreme sexuality is so over-the-top - like a Latina Jessica Rabbit - that it threatens to topple the narrative into softcore irrelevance.

And yet.

At the core of the film, Rosario is a woman who never found her way. She says she's been 'fucked over' by every man she's ever known. Her mother disowned her. She pushes away Emilio, who might have been the true love of her life, and is willing to confide in Antonio mainly because he's too mild-mannered to be any kind of threat to her sanity. When a pivotal event occurs - which is too much of a spoiler to give away - she is completely devastated.

Director Emilio Maille plays around with time, but otherwise eschews other modern tricks of the trade (no lightning-fast editing, split screens, etc.). It becomes apparent that the unreality of much of the film is a steely-eyed view of the heyday of the Colombian drug cartels, where everything was flashy and sexy. ROSARIO TIJERAS never gets into anything detailed about the cartels; we have barely a glimpse of the bosses, with most of the action taking place at the soldier level. But that fits, because Rosario is an unquestioning soldier par excellence who kills or
fucks on command.

In the light of day, certainly one could pick through the script (adapted from a novel by Jorge Franco Ramos), zero in on the cliches, and complain about the dissipation of energy for much of the second half of the film. While the film is unreeling, though, while Flora Martinez smolders as one of the sexier girls with guns ever captured on celluloid, you'll put away all reservations and root for the kissing killer to overcome her melancholy and triumph against true evil.

ROSARIO TIJERAS opened in Colombia in August and has reportedly become the #2 grossing film of all time locally (behind only THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST). It has also been released in Argentina and Spain, and shortly will open in Guatemala, Venezuela, Peru, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Brazil.

Future plans include a US release, and undoubtedly other territories as well. The official web site is supposed to be here, but as of this writing it's not operational.

The film had its North American Premiere at AFI FEST. More information is available here.