Cristina Umaña in "Malamor" [2003 Colombia]

Colombian director Jorge Echeverri's 2003 drama, "Malamor" [Eng. Title: Bad Love] is one intensely freaky film. We use the expression "madly in love" casually these days - but this film literally depicts such a scenario.

Impressionable teenager Lisa disrupts her studies and life as she falls in love with her mother's lover. Coming from a broken home with an indifferent father and indulgent mother, Lisa sees a soulmate in her mother's lover - who happpens to be a hard drug addict. This inevitably leads her into experimenting with drugs, and after an overdose ends up at the very hospital where her dad works. Her mother's lover refuses Lisa's advances for the sake of propriety, but harbours similar feelings towards her. Things get more complicated when she had to run away from home - after shooting her father. The cute Cirstina Umaña gives a fine performance as the hopelessly infatuated Lisa. Even though the film is decently cinematographed, the quality of the DVD transfer isn't the best, but I improved it as much as I could while compiling these scenes.





Scene Guide:

Scene 1: Exchanging messages the old fashioned way - Lisa shows she has a sense of humour when we know she named her pigeon 'Cellular' - who needs texting anyway..!

Scene 2: Lisa increasingly retreats into her own world, talking to inanimate objects, and of course, her 'Cellular'...

Scene 3: Having run away from home, she now lives like a nomadic hunter in the wild.

Scene 4: Lisa entices her mother's lover to join her in the woods - and she lays out an elaborate welcoming ceremony, but is disappointed after learning he merely came to persuade her to return.

Scene 5: Lisa refuses to accompany her mother's lover back home. After seeing him off by the highway, she takes out her frustrations on a stranger by inviting him for sex, and then scaring the hell out of him.




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