Sin tetas no hay paraíso

Despite having a slightly different title, this seems to be a feature-film adaptation of the long-running Colombian telenovela "Sin Senos, No Hay Paraiso ("Without Breasts, There Is No Heaven"). The telenovela is much more well-known and popular in both Latin America and the US (where it is currently streaming on Netflix with English subtitles), but if you don't care for the never-ending, OTT melodrama of telenovela series and prefer a two-hour movie with a beginning, middle, and end, this might be the better way to go. (Also if you happen to be male and more interested in a lot of bared "tetas" than in soapy melodramatics. . .). This movie is similar to the telenovela in that it casts a number of VERY hot twenty-ish Columbian actresses from the middle and upper classes as younger teenage barrio-dwelling characters. So while it is an effective social commentary on the allure being a prostitute or drug moll holds for impoverished teenage colombianas, it ironically also glamorizes this same lifestyle quite a bit simply because the actresses involved are so attractive and sexually desirable.

The lead, Isabel Cristina Cadavid, is unbelievably sexy and adorable. She starts out as a uniformed schoolgirl (although she and her equally voluptuous friends look more like strippers dressed as schoolgirls). She then does a stint as bikini-clad beauty contestant. She draws the attention of local drug dealers and gets gang-raped, but continues to hang around these unsavory elements and is given as a "prize" to a major drug trafficker who has just gotten out of prison. She also has a nice-guy boyfriend on the side, even though both of them play around a lot with other people. And even though she has pretty much a perfect body to begin with, she is obsessed with getting a breast enlargement and "takes it out in trade" with the surgeon who performs the procedure. (Interestingly, the real actress seems to have gone through actual breast surgery for this movie unless these were very convincing special effects).

Unlike the telenovela, this movie does END, and you might suspect it's not going to end particularly well for a heroine who is often less-than-sympathetic and has pursued such an ill-advised lifestyle. It has an effective ending and it is a generally effective movie, even if a lot of the appeal admittedly is seeing Cadavid and her sexy friends half-naked or naked and involved in a various sexual situations.