Event

SOPLO DE VIDA

aka Breath of Life
Dir. Luis Ospina, 1999
Colombia. 108 mins.

Ospinas sole foray into Hollywood style film noir, the 80s-set Soplo de Vida concerns the disappearance of Golondria (Flora Martinez), a beautiful sex worker, as investigated by grizzled ex-cop Emerson Roque Fierro (Fernando Solorzano) - nicknamed Dick Tracy by the sleazoid tenants of his ramshackle hotel home. While Ospina clearly enjoys teasing attendant genre tropes out of this seedy milieu, SOPLO DE VIDA also allows for another cross-examining of repressed traumas: Golondrias history exposes a conspiracy that includes an old john with links to paramilitary death squads, while her murder becomes yet another bellwether of the hypocrisy that follows Ospinas every last depiction of Colombian culture.

On setting a genre film in an 80s context, Ospina said Noir travels very well; besides that, it is a genre that has not aged very much, because it is a genre in which one can manipulate a certain moral ambiguity, where the good guys arent completely good, nor are the bad guys completely bad; rather, the characters are enveloped in a corrupt environment that permeates everything and affects everything.