Pantaleon y las visitadoras

 

                    

Pantaleon y las visitadoras is Francisco J. Lombardi’s film adaptation of a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa. It’s an entertaining movie, what else can I say. If you have to watch it just do it for the sake of watch an adaptation based on a novel that is full of social commentary aimed at the military dictatorships of south America. The fact that Pantalean y las visitadoras is a mainstream movie and accessible to any moviegoer makes it just an entertaining film, and not a landmark in Latino American cinema, not because it is accessible to any audience due to dumb down plot in the movie it weakens the entire story. Pataleon y las visitadoras like I said, is accessible to any audience especially those who have not read the novel, which is not a bad thing per say, even though the novel by Vargas Llosa will continue to be an experience that the movie adaptation cannot offered.

The imposed romance plot line of the movie is corny and not creative or even original. It was just pasted together to make the audience follow blindly expecting something to happen between Pantaleon and La Colombiana. Whatever did happen between the two was eclipsed by such a corny set up and in the end we don’t really know enough about both their feelings to even care. The romance plotline could have been executed better or done away with like other elements of the story were done away with in the film adaptation. The story might have even been better and totally different if the romance had been omitted as far as the movie is concerned. What I really did not like about the romance between Pantaleon and la Colombiana in the movie is that the novel is not about them, instead the movie makes out to be this love story between an officer of the army and a working girl.

Something I did miss from the novel, or rather was lost in the translation is the briefings and letters Pantaleon sends to his officer, this method of narration was an lineal-easy-entertaining way of reading the story. In the movie, however, this method of narration is totally lost as we only see one or two of these briefings that are either stale and none comical, or rushed and out of place,. The novels way of skipping from narration to narration is not present. I realize this may all be too harsh but the fact is, the movie is just an entertaining one, not a great one. There are a million and one things that could have been included in the film adaptation that would have allowed for an even better finished product and made the movie feel more like the novel.