''Loving Pablo'', internationally known as ''Escobar'', is a 2017 English-language Spanish

biographical A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or c ...

crime drama film In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...

directed by

Fernando León de Aranoa Fernando León de Aranoa (born 26 May 1968) is a Spanish screenwriter and film director. León de Aranoa entered the film industry as a screenwriter. He made his feature film directorial debut with '' Familia'', which won him the Goya Award for ...

, based on Virginia Vallejo's memoir '' Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar''. It was screened out of competition in the

74th Venice International Film Festival The 74th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 30 August to 9 September 2017. The jury president was announced as the actress Annette Bening on 5 July 2017. '' Downsizing'', directed by Alexander Payne, was selected to open ...

and in the Special Presentations section at the

2017 Toronto International Film Festival The 42nd annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 7 to 17 September 2017. There were fourteen programmes, with the Vanguard and City to City programmes both being retired from previous years, with the total number of films down b ...

Plot

Between 1983 and 1987, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar had a romantic relationship with the journalist and the television presenter, Virginia Vallejo.

Cast

Javier Bardem Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem (; born 1 March 1969) is a Spanish actor. Known for his roles in blockbusters and foreign films, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the psychopathic assassin Anton Chigurh in ...

as Pablo Escobar *

Penélope Cruz Penélope Cruz Sánchez (; ; born 28 April 1974) is a Spanish actress. Known for her roles in films of several genres, particularly those in the Spanish language, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a British ...

as Virginia Vallejo *

Peter Sarsgaard John Peter Sarsgaard (; born March 7, 1971) is an American actor. His first feature role was in '' Dead Man Walking'' in 1995. He then appeared in the 1998 independent films ''Another Day in Paradise'' and ''Desert Blue''. That same year, Sarsga ...

as Shepard, based on Steve Murphy *

Julieth Restrepo Julieth Restrepo (born December 19, 1986) is a Colombian model and actress. Career Restrepo began her acting career with the 2006 Colombian horror film At the End of the Spectra. She has also acted in live theater. She was nominated for :es: ...

as Maria Victoria Henao * David Valencia as Santos * David Ojalvo as FBI Agent * Giselle Da Silva as Olguita Arranz

Reception

Box office

''Loving Pablo'' grossed $22,017 in the United States and Canada, and $17,5 million in other territories, plus $60,312 with home video sales.

Critical response

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 31% based on 48 reviews, with a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

rating of 4.82/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "''Loving Pablo'' bungles its seemingly cinematic real-life story -- and a pair of talented stars -- in producing a lurid biopic that adds nothing to the Escobar subgenre." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 42 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Loving Pablo 2017 films 2017 drama films 2017 biographical drama films Spanish biographical drama films English-language Spanish films Biographical films about Pablo Escobar Cultural depictions of Pablo Escobar Films directed by Fernando León de Aranoa Films scored by Federico Jusid Films set in the 1980s Films set in Colombia 2010s English-language films 2010s Spanish films