Loving Pablo

"A gangster. A princess. The true story of a most unlikely love affair."

2017 2h 3m ES

😐

6.3

MID

★6.3TMDB · 1,059

CrimeDrama

Synopsis

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The film chronicles the rise and fall of the world's most feared drug lord Pablo Escobar and his volatile love affair with Colombia's most famous journalist Virginia Vallejo throughout a reign of terror that tore a country apart.

“A gangster. A princess. The true story of a most unlikely love affair.”

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Cast

Javier Bardem
Pablo Escobar
Penélope Cruz
Virginia Vallejo
Peter Sarsgaard
Shepard
Julieth Restrepo
Maria Victoria Henao
Óscar Jaenada
Santoro
David Valencia
Santos
Mark Basnight
Family Man
Joavany Alvarez
Ignacio Velarde

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Fernando León de Aranoa
Writers: Fernando León de Aranoa, Jeff Zimbalist, Michael Zimbalist
Languages: English, Spanish
Countries: Bulgaria, Spain

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $4.7M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Made its money back 3.8× over at the box office.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 9 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Spanish.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 2 countries: Bulgaria, Spain.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

CAST

Did you know

217+ people credited in cast and crew — a small city's worth of labour.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, shot by Álex Catalán. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Federico Jusid. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Fernando León de Aranoa directs. Álex Catalán behind the camera. Federico Jusid scores. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in Bulgaria, Spain. Dialogue in English, Spanish.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Shot for just $4.7M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
2Made its money back 3.8× over at the box office.
3Released 9 years ago.
4Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Spanish.
5International production across 2 countries: Bulgaria, Spain.
6217+ people credited in cast and crew — a small city's worth of labour.
7Directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, shot by Álex Catalán. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
8Original score by Federico Jusid. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
9Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard carry the top of the cast.
10Marketing tagline: "A gangster. A princess. The true story of a most unlikely love affair.".
11IMDB entry: tt4682788 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
12Classified under 9 themes, including "journalist", "based on novel or book", "cocaine", "biography".

The technical file

Cinematography: Álex Catalán
Original score: Federico Jusid
Production design: Alain Baineé
Costume design: Loles García Galeán
Makeup / hair: Ana Lozano
VFX supervisor: Oleksii Moskalenko
Sound: Ryan Nowak
Stunt coordinator: Todor Lazarov
Runtime: 123 min · 2h 3m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $4,667,008
Box office: $17,535,962
Return: 376% of budget
Original language: ES
Certification (US): R
IMDB: Loving Pablo (2017)

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Fernando León de Aranoa

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What people are saying

tmdb280390232022-08-29
★ 1/10
A caption at the beginning of Loving Pablo informs us that “This film is inspired by real events. Some of the characters, names, and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes." What they don't tell us is that even the protagonists’ nationalities and languages have been changed. Colombians Pablo Escobar and Virginia Vallejo are played by Spanish actors speaking English – or, at the very least, trying to; Javier Bardem's English is atrocious and Penelope Cruz's is abominable, and their Colombian accents are just as bad, if not worse. To confuse things further, the characters occasionally say some random words or phrases in Spanish. Now, I don't think it's asking too much of the audience to pretend that the characters are speaking Spanish among themselves even as the actors deliver their lines in English; after all Hemingway did something similar in For Whom the Bell Tolls. But if the characters are supposed to be speaking in their native language, shouldn’t they sound like native speakers? Also, the dialogue should be consistent; i.e., all English all the time – because otherwise, what language are they supposed to be speaking when they say something in Spanish? This is a Spanish film, about Spanish-speaking characters, written, produced and directed by Spaniards; why they felt the need to tell their story in any other language than that of Cervantes, I haven’t the foggiest. Except, of course, for the obvious reason of appealing to the Anglo-Saxon market, but in this case why go to the trouble of getting Spanish – especially big names like Bardem and Cruz – and Colombians actors, only to force them to recite most of their dialogue in English? If nothing else, they could have at least had the decency not to have Cruz narrate the movie.

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