quantum of solace...entertaining, yet inaccurate

Tonight I ventured out with my roomies for dinner and a movie. After a delicious dinner at one of our favorite "gringo" places, we headed up the prado for a movie. Tonight's movie of choice: James Bond, Quantum of Solace. Now I like James Bond movies and have seen quite a few, if not all of them. However, I must say this was perhaps the most entertaining. And not because it included fight scenes on foot, in cars, in boats, and in airplanes. And not because I find Daniel Craig to be an amazing James Bond (he is fine, just nothing really special). No, this particular movie was thoroughly entertaining because it was supposed to be set in my own dearly beloved Bolivia. And because some of you may see the movie and think "Oh I have a friend who lives there." I would like to set a few things straight:

1. None of the movie was actually filmed in Bolivia. It was all filmed in Chile.

2. La Paz is in the Andes Mountains and is located at 12,000ft. Anywhere you go in La Paz you can see huge mountains...none of which were ever seen in the movie. There are also no flat streets in La Paz. In fact, every time they were supposed to be driving around the city the entire audience in the theater burst into laughter as it was so obviously not La Paz.

3. La Paz is in the mountains and therefore it is cold. Every scene in Bolivia was set to look like your stereotypical Latin American town. People outside in skimpy clothes, men not wearing shirts. You would NEVER see that here. People are incredibly modest and dress in darker, warmer clothes.

4. Even the indigenous people shown in the city (not necessarily the ones shown in the campo looking for water) were more of a caricature of the true Aymaran people. It was like someone had briefly described to the movie makers what a cholita looked like and they did their best to recreate it without ever having seen a true cholita woman.

5. Perhaps my favorite inaccuracy was the many shots of nicely paved highways through the desert. Yeah, there is not a single road in the entire country of Bolivia that looks like that. It is amazing when you travel in South America and you drive into Chile and Peru and are all of a sudden on a real highway, because honestly, there is not a single paved highway in Bolivia. If you are driving in the desert, you are driving over the sand, perhaps following the tracks of another car that went before you. Trust me, I've done it!

6. Another entertaining part was when the Bolivian police pull Bond over after the party. The entire audience once again erupted into laughter at the very comical, yet fairly accurate depiction of Bolivian police. They actually do dress like that!

On the other hand, they did get a few things right on the money. The comment towards the end about coca and communism is pretty much true. And all the talk about the U.S. helping stage a coup, hit a little too close to home, as a couple months ago the American ambassador was kicked out of Bolivia, as well as the DEA and other US organizations because the president has accused them of helping to stage an attempted coup in the Eastern part of the country.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I loved the fact that I am so at home in this country that even I can identify all the discrepancies. And since it was subtitled in Spanish and they don't bother to subtitle the parts when they are actually speaking Spanish, it gave me a chance to practice my Spanish listening skills!