DIRECTOR SURVIVES MEDELLIN SHOOTING.

Barbet Schroeder's latest movie could have been a kiss of death, but instead it was a reversal of fortune.

In late 1999, while shooting ``Our Lady of the Assassins'' (which opened Friday in West Los Angeles at the Nuart and will expand to more screens in the following weeks) in Medellin, Colombia, Schroeder, considered a foreigner because of his non-Colombian residency, was a prime target for kidnappers.

As a result, the Los Angeles- and New York-based director followed extensive security precautions; he was given round-the-clock armed bodyguards, lived in a fortress and never traveled twice in the same car.

To avoid any cinematic catastrophes, Schroeder used a Colombian cast and crew, and at one point set up a fake crew and cast of street performers to distract attention from the actual filming.

Much discretion

``Barbet was very courageous and discreet,'' says the film's lead actor, German Jaramillo. ``He managed the situation with a lot of discretion.''

``It certainly made me think it wasn't a place I would want to go on vacation,'' says Playboy executive editor Stephen Randall, who, in the August issue, published 6,000 words of Schroeder's personal diary of his Medellin mayhem. ``I immediately scratched it off my list.''

Schroeder, however, dismisses the danger, making it sound less harrowing than a studio shot.

``In a way, there's more tension on a Hollywood set than on the streets of Medellin,'' says the 60-year-old filmmaker, who was born in Tehran and grew up in Bogota before residing in France. ``In reality, there is some truth to that. I was worrying about less things overall than on a Hollywood movie. There are more contradictory wills in Hollywood; I get more aggravation.''

Schroeder's behind-the-scenes experiences, however, resembled the on-camera drama, whose screenplay by Fernando Vallejo is based on his novel ``La Virgen de Los Sicarios.''

The drama (in Spanish with English subtitles) unfolds as Fernando (Jaramillo), a world-weary writer, returns to his native Medellin to die. But the hauntingly glorious old colonial city he once knew is now infamous as the center of the Colombian cocaine cartel. Violence and murder are commonplace and accepted parts of everyday life. Fernando is deeply troubled, but finds a new love for life through his emotional involvement with two male teen-agers, Alexis (Anderson Ballesteros) and Wilmar (Juan David Restrepo), who just happen to pursue a daily cycle of casual assassination and reprisals.

First time in 16 years

This film, Schroeder's first international language movie in 16 years, follows the pattern of his previous provocative movies, including ``Idi Amin Dada'' (1974), ``Maitresse'' (1976), ``Koko the Talking Gorilla'' (1978), ``Barfly'' (1987), ``Reversal of Fortune'' (1990), ``Single White Female'' (1992) and ``Kiss of Death'' (1995).

``If Schroeder's films can be said to share a common impulse, it is toward examining the moral and philosophical consequences of extreme forms of extra-social, if not anti-social, freedom,'' wrote Film Comment editor Gavin Smith in a 1995 interview with the Oscar-nominated director. ``The dropout or subculture mentality of each film is fueled by hedonism or an obsessive craving that destroys its communicants and jeopardizes their very identities.''

``Our Lady of the Assassins'' maintains that tradition. It caught the attention of two Los Angeles film festival organizers, who screened the movie in July.

Harrowing, powerful

``It's a powerful film. It speaks a great deal about something that's very sad in this world, the loss of the value of life,'' says Marlene Dermer, co-founder and executive director-programmer of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. ``It's so easy to kill each other. But it's not just a problem in South America. It's a world problem.''

``It's a film that presents a harrowing and complicated portrait of one of the most violent and misunderstood parts of the world,'' says Stephen Gutwillig, executive director of the gay and lesbian film showcase Outfest. ``It's the kind of subject matter you don't want to see, but the film brings enormous humanity to a volatile situation.''

But Schroeder doesn't convey his message with an excessive body count. Instead, he prefers the less-is-more method.

``I don't want to do too much violence because then the audience will have trouble identifying with the main hero,'' he says. ``I want the audience to enter the story the same way the main character enters the story.

``It's the story of somebody who's ready to die because he's lived enough. But he encounters something much worse than death, which is an immense pain,'' Schroeder says. ``Through the pain of the main character, we feel the pain of a whole country. That's the dynamic of the whole movie.''

Then, Jaramillo's job is to bring that pain front and center for the audience to understand.

``He's a man who has many conflicts with society, one of which is he's homosexual,'' Jaramillo says of his character. ``He's very disgusted with the civilization. He's disgusted with the whole world. He has an apocalyptic view of the world. The character is very hopeless.''

But ``his involvement with the boy in some way is what he was looking for. When he found love, he discovered a new way of life,'' Jaramillo says. ``For that, it's a very important transformation, and the beginning of the story.''

At this point, Jaramillo finds a way to portray Fernando in a more multidimensional way as opposed to an adult pursuing teen-age males.

Comparison with Socrates

``I thought many times of the story of Socrates walking in the streets of Athens talking with Alcibiades. Socrates was an old man and a philosopher and Alcibiades was a young warrior. They talked about all the different situations of the society in Athens at that time, about the gods, about the authorities, about the state, about some principal matters. Fernando was talking all the time with the boy like a philosopher, a teacher, like a father, also like a lover,'' Jaramillo says. ``It's a very complex relationship between them.''

`` 'Our Lady of the Assassins' reflects, in an extremely nuanced way, one of the most complicated relationships we've ever seen in gay cinema,'' Gutwillig says. ``It's a complex portrayal of a relationship that most North Americans are not that familiar with. It's the kind of relationship that will push a lot of buttons.''

Schroeder, however, says he took steps to avoid pushing buttons.

``I don't want to do too much sex because I don't want to disturb people. That's why there is practically nothing,'' he says. ``Whatever there is is done with extreme good measurement and good taste. We see them in the mirror one second and then kiss on the bed and that's it. Nothing.''

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Barbet Schroeder's latest film made him vulnerable to Colombian kidnappers, but, he says, ``There's more tension on a Hollywood set.''

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer