Photographed By Ellinor Forje Claudia Traisac plays the character Maria, in the motion picture "Escobar: Paradise Lost" (2014). Whenever I hear the name Maria, I think of "West Side Story" (whenever I think of "West Side Story, I equally think of Carlos Santana), beautiful tango, salsa and flamenco inspired outfits or understated drama for lack of a better phrase, come to mind. That's exactly how Traisac dresses with ease. And with the fangirling done, I will now proceed.
Written and directed by thespian turned director, Andrea Di Stefano, "Escobar: Paradise Lost" tells the fictionalized story of; "Surfer boy meets girl on vacation, then meets her beloved beer-drinking uncle, Pablo Escobar."
It turns out however that elcariño Pablito is no Pollyana. Instead he's a pied-piping Pol Poterian Pusher. The rest, as they say, is a tragedy. A modern version of the greatest romance ever told; The Garden of Eden where Benico Del Toro fittingly plays the snake (please note that I'm not calling Del Toro a reptile per se. I'm merely alluding to the fact that he also voices the snake in the forthcoming animated version of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince").
Di Stefano, who isn't a "documentarist" as he puts it, decided to focus on Escobar and his racketeering ways from a voyeuristic angle. Thus, the narrative arch of Nick, played by Josh Hutcherson, is the gate through which we enter the Medellín Cartelof Columbia.
Given the aspect that "Escobar: Paradise Lost" borrows part of its title from the epic poem by John Milton, it's titillating to discern the aesthetic prose Josh, Benicio and Andrea use to lay forward their respective points of view:
Hutcherson, "Nick had a naïveté about him."
Del Toro, "He (Escobar) seduced a whole country."
Di Stefano, "The story about a man who thinks he found his own paradise."
These guys.