Loving Pablo is a 2018 biographical drama about a journalist who strikes up a romantic relationship with notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Since his dramatic rise to power and highly publicized takedown in 1993, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has become a recurring media fascination, his hugely opulent lifestyle and terrifying reign of terror the stuff of legends and mana from the gods for screenwriters. He’s been the focus of more than a dozen television series and films, not to mention becoming the model for every drug lord on-screen since. The recent Netflix series Narcos was proof enough the man was still a draw, his story a virtual fountain of interest that seems without end.
Now comes writer/director Fernando León de Aranoa‘s take on Virginia Vallejo‘s 2007 book Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar, written by the Colombian journalist and television personality who become entangled in Pablo’s web at the height of his power. Her exile and flight to the United States would itself be a minor media sensation and the history that led up to this is the subject of the film, one that tracks her first meeting with Pablo (Javier Bardem) at a party to celebrate the ‘crowning’ of him as the king of the Medellín Cartel to his eventual undoing.
We learn that Vallejo (Penélope Cruz) is already a very popular TV personality in 1981 when she’s introduced for an interview with Escobar, his sudden staggering wealth from his trafficking of cocaine giving him incredible power and influence, some of it used (publically) to help rebuild the community. Taken by his presence, she vows privately that she has no cares for how he makes his money, only for how he spends it. Pablo himself is taken by the woman’s beauty and begins an open affair with her, winning her a divorce and luring her into his shadows, even while he maintains a marriage and family. However, as Pablo continues to gain power and fend off competition and aggressors with devastating violence and death, she realizes she is in a trap, her only hope an American DEA Agent named Shepard (Peter Sarsgaard) looking to take the kingpin down.
Told mostly from Vellejo’s perspective with extended moments that follow Pablo himself, it’s broken by sporadic narration from Virginia as she offers bits of exposition to keep viewers informed on the fast-moving and often complicated story. Naturally, this is actually one of weaker aspects of the film, much of what she is saying already clear, the film’s mix of dialogue-heavy exchanges with Escobar and his numerous detractors and the harrowing imagery of his ruthless response more than enough to paint a vivid picture. This is further a bit of a stretch though on the film’s conceit, that this is Vellejo’s story, since she’s not even present for most of what Pablo is involved with. Clearly, the movie fills in the blanks with what we know from other investigations and what became public knowledge as Escobar took to wholesale murder out in the streets, keeping Vellejo’s account a bit secondary.
The story of Pablo Escobar is a rabbit hole of horror almost too deep for a single film. That’s a hurdle many who tackle this most likely face, here, even at over two hours, the story rushed to wring as much from the tale as possible. De Aranoa does best with Pablo’s side, giving Bardem free reign to take the well-known larger-life-character and elevate it to near cartoonish levels, something that sort of fits in the hyperbolic context necessary for telling Escobar’s outrageous tale. Bardem wastes no opportunity to give Pablo some flare, looking flabby (in his rubber fat suit) and indecent whenever he can. It’s almost amusing.
Cruz does what she can, Vellejo less present in her own story than Pablo, already on the outs with Escobar before the first act is over, leaving her more to the peripheral as we follow the crime lords exploits. Admittedly, these moments are often compelling, with the violence and threats of such giving many scenes some terrific intensity. De Aranoa stages several very effective set pieces, leaving the movie a very good-looking film, even if there’s not much new to tell, especially for anyone who’s coming here for something fresh.
Well-made, this retelling of the fall of history’s most notorious drug lord still has plenty to entertain, even as it lives in the long shadow of more thorough works, though doesn’t quite do enough to separate itself from the pack, leaving it less significant than it might have been if released a few years earlier. Nonetheless, for enthusiasts of the man and myth, it’s a solid recommendation.