Movie Review: Quien Mato a la Llamita Blanca?

Last night I finally got a chance to see the new Bolivian film, Quien Mato a la Llamita Blanca? (Who Killed the Little White Llama?), by Rodrigo Bellott. A mix of cops and robbers comedy, biting political satire aimed at every power group in the nation, great images from across the length of the country, and Bolivian cinematic hip, anyone interested in Bolivia should get the chance to see it.

The essential plot involves a whacked-out pair of Bolivian robbers, Domitila and Jacinto (played wickedly by Erika Ándia, Miguel Valverde) – a braided Paceña and her longhaired boyfriend, who seems like a Bolivian version of Cheech Marin. Nicknamed, Los Totolitos (The Turtledoves) they do things like rob a motorist on the Prado in La Paz, steal his car and send him back into the street in his underwear.

Then they score a chance for a big cocaine heist through a slimy American named “El Negro” (which is funny because “El Negro” is a gringo) played with great camp by my friend John Byers (way to go John, loved the Texas accent!) who also played the slimy American consulate official in American Visa, another recent Bolivian film.

Soon the two are chased the length of Bolivia, from La Paz to the Beni, by a pair of Bolivian anti-drug police (FELCN), an old guy and a young one (Cacho Mendieta and Pablo Fernández) who smoke pot and snort cocaine while on the pursuit. I’ll leave the plot there.

You can tell the movie was produced by the directors of a film school (La Fabrica here in Cochabamba) because it is a rainstorm of wild editing devices – screens split into eight squares to show the same scene from different perspectives, rapid MTV cuts, and the splashing of text across the screen to provide quick definition to the Bolivian slang tossed into the dialogue, An example is “ch’api”, one of my favorites, used to describe things that are tacky or of low-quality, as in the tiny blue Orange Crush delivery van that Los Totolitos steal to make their way across country with the coke.

Quien Mato a la Llamita Blanca? is funny, and in parts hilarious, a lot of that thanks to the Greek Chorus political commentary provided by Guery Sandóval who shows up in all the major scenes. Riding a dilapidated bike along a wall in Oruro still painted with faded “Goni 2002” propaganda, he does a dead-on imitation of the deposed President’s bad gringo Spanish accent. Later, with Carlos Mesa’s face popping onto the screen in a bubble, his character reminds us of the events in 2005 when Mesa kept saying he wanted to resign and the Congress would ask him to stay. “What a country, when we have a President who refuses to leave [Goni] we blockade the highways. When we have a President who wants to leave we say, ‘tranquilo hermano, tanquilo.”

Evo is not spared either, nor are foreign NGO workers. The Sandóval character tell us that Evo is “un lider de primero (first class)”, but that is because when he was campaigning around the country last year he always flew first class. Later, in Cochabamba, we meet an attractive French human rights activist who keeps chanting like a parrot, “coca is not cocaine, coca is not cocaine.”

But no one gets skewered more than Cambas and the elite of Santa Cruz – a mix of wannabe beauty queens (Miss Autonomy) and their middle aged wannabe lovers. The 5-star Los Tojibos hotel, one of many locales across the country to open its doors for filming, will never seem the same (American Airlines put me up there once).

There’s more – the actual ex-Mr. Bolivia from Nebraska who plays himself, a great scene in Oruro where the robbers and the coke-sniffing anti-drug cops all stop to get drunk and dance in La Fiesta de San Jorge (the film is full of scenes that mix real Bolivia with film hip, and it works), a stolen Hari Krishna VW that keeps “reincarnating” into different colors and flower designs, and a sound track that turns Bolivian folclórico into amped-up rock. That works too.

A friend of mine asked me if I thought people who didn’t know Bolivia would get the film. I actually don’t think so, not anywhere close to the way you would if you live here or are a Bolivian abroad.

But if you are here, run don’t walk to a cinema nearby to see the film before it leaves the big screen and, presumably in Bolivian tradition, becomes available on pirated CDs on the street. Of course, maybe for this film, that works.

View more details about the film, including a trailer, here.