La mujer del animal

Another reviewer called the director the Victoria De sica of Colombia or Latino filmmaking. I might agree. The director certainly knows what he's doing. The plot moves along well and his insistence on shooting locally renders a gritty realism. This was not an easy watch but a realistic one that tourists and even Colombia's urbanites do not see. The acting is really good and the camera work is as well. These types of experiences are not limited to the barrios of Medellín, I witnessed the same predatory behavior in many of the small town favelas in Brasil not up close and personal but the impotence of the locals in policing themselves since the state clearly ignores these types of realities. I want to underscore that the acting was on a level that legitimized this whole filmmaking cinema verite approach. Kudos to the filmmaker for having the stones to do this. So much content nowadays is formulaic and incredibly shallow productions to feed the streaming machines like Netflix etc. I've missed meaningful Cinema and this fulfills that charter.

The extremely low budget it's the biggest setback of this movie. The story tells the story of Amparo and his "husband" the Animal, doing so it shows a whole circle of human behavior, from the childish naive young girl, to the despicable sexual predator, passing by the permittivity of some families and the code of silence in the poorest communities with the complicity of the total absence of the state of law and the cruel living conditions in the outskirts of Medellin, Colombia.

With a film industry lacking of good strong story's but full of remakes, CGI and big explosions, this kind of movies are a breath of fresh air. Sadly Victor Gaviria is too stubborn and vindicate his style by perpetuating the extreme "humble" production as a realism dogma. It's true that the veracity of the story is lever up by filming on location. But there are plenty of examples of great filmmaking doing the same thing with much better production, the best example would be Fernando Meirelle's Cidade de Deus (2002) aka "City of God". To sum it up: Humble production it's not equal to more realism.

Still is a good movie, but maybe not for the typical audience.

This movie shows the reality of my country.

It portraits perfectly how most of our people live, something that a tourist would never experience, the invisible majority. It also shows how vulnerable women are living in a place where justice is a luxury only people with money can afford.

I highly recommend this movie.