One sees Sofía Vergara and doesn’t think: “Wow, the ideal actress to play the drug trafficker Griselda Blanco.” Her image in Hollywood was based on three pillars: an explosive beauty, a friendliness always at the service of entertainment, and the comical vision that she showed in the sitcom Modern Family. But you only need to see a few seconds of her promotional interview in El hormiguero with Pablo Motos, where she is brave and without filters, to understand that she was a good candidate for the miniseries Griselda.
The so-called Godmother of Cocaine or Black Widow due to her lethal love resume, migrated illegally to the United States in 1964. There she had three children and, when she began to attract the attention of the authorities, she fled to Colombia to settle again in late 70s in a city of Miami whose market he wanted to control. With her help, not only did American citizens have easier access to cocaine, but the streets of Miami became accustomed to drug-related murders.
Griselda, somewhat opportunely, begins with the Colombian woman fleeing to Miami after confronting Alberto Bravo (Alberto Ammann), the second husband who introduced her to this criminal market. And I say that she is timely because, thanks to this situation, the character can be presented almost as a woman in trouble, a victim of circumstances, manipulated by love, and helpless when she moved to Miami as a single mother of three children. A look at her biography allows us to understand that she was not exactly like that.
It is not the only narrative chiaroscuro of a miniseries created by screenwriter Ingrid Escajeda (Justified, Silo) and Doug Miro, Eric Newman and Carlo Bernard, those responsible for Narcos and Narcos: Mexico. It is surprising that these three men, after allowing us to understand the rise of Pablo Escobar in the Medellín Cartel with the dramatic licenses necessary in a dramatic work, do not know how to convey how Griselda Blanco’s empire was built. It is only defined in contrast to patriarchy.
And, if we are honest, Griselda can be understood as a feminist reading of the Narcos universe. She makes an idea clearly: that women also have the right to be taken seriously as drug traffickers. At first it can almost be read as an inspirational tale of the hero. The protagonist is used by a man and executes revenge on her. And, starting with a kilo of cocaine, she settles into the drug trafficking network despite the men continually reminding her that it is no business for a woman.
The application of feminism to the illegal cocaine trade and contract killings is perverse, as was the use of the movement to portray Rosa Peral as a victim of slut-shaming in The Rosa Peral Tapes, also on Netflix. However, as a fictional story, it works precisely because of the sex of the protagonist: it provides a distinctive element in a universe of drug trafficking that we already know and with a narrative skeleton as hackneyed as the progressive loss of humanity of a person as it corrodes them. the ambition.
Sofía Vergara, also an executive producer, knows how to use Griselda to unbox herself and reveal to the world that she is more than Gloria Pritchett. Her prosthetic nose may not characterize her as Griselda Blanco, but it does allow us to not see Sofía Vergara in an ugly setting. Once she dissociates herself from her highly cultivated self-image, the actress offers security and presence.
In the performance, paradoxically, Vergara’s limitations are noticeable: her inability to work from subtlety and that need to go all out shamelessly when she has the television equivalent of an Oscar clip. But in his work there is also the strength and magnetism that only stars know how to bring to the screen.
With this brilliance, Vergara contributes to praising a conventional and forgettable display vehicle, as most recent Netflix productions tend to be, even when they have such a questionable use of feminism.
