Netflix’s Colombian romance thriller series, Fake Profile follows a cabaret dancer meeting the man of her dreams through a dating app, only to learn later he’s not riddled with lies and deception.
Story
Camila is a cabaret dancer who meets Fernando through a dating app. He’s all she could dream of but after a period of bliss, their relationship meets an abrupt end and she later learns that he just didn’t use a fake profile but also hid some damning details about his life in Colombia.
She follows him and takes the help of driver David to uncover the truth about Miguel aka Fernando, who has a wife and two children. Meanwhile, his wife and son catch up to his cheating while his father-in-law seems to be conspiring a grand plan as well.
Camila’s life is put at risk multiple times while Miguel’s family breaks apart, as he also tries to uncover his father-in-law Pedro’s schemes. Camila and Ángela, Miguel’s wife, have a final confrontation, and Camila is presumed dead as a result of it.
Later, Miguel is also left to die by Ángela, but both Miguel and Camila survive, and return to tell Ángela the truth about her father and the reason why wished to destroy her marriage and her brother’s relationship as well. Meanwhile, a confrontation ensues and Ángela shoots her gun, accidentally killing her father instead of Camila and Miguel.
Performances
There isn’t a lot given to the actors to do when it comes to the writing department. Yes, there are lots and lots of heightened dramatic moments and emotional upheavals, but the subtlety in-between is all lost here, and nuance is for the fairy tales.
That said, the cast members do their best with what they have. Carolina Miranda is mesmerizing as Camila and delivers adequately during the emotional scenes. The same is true for Rodolfo Salas, who’s a bit more muted when it comes to tears or appropriate levels of expressions in the scenes that ask for it.
Manuela González and Mauricio Hénao deliver noteworthy performances as Ángela and Adrían as well.
Positives
The moral rot that comes with the capitalistic pursuit of money and maintaining superficial legacies while the poor get weeded out and punished for hustling or even existing make for some intriguing points of commentary.
There are power dynamics and dodgy relationships at play here that all provide great thrill as they unfold and contend with external forces and shocking revelations.
Negatives
Fake Profile fails to deliver on its potential as a class-conscious tale of power, greed, and bankruptcy of morals that it all entails. Instead, the affair is rendered very one-dimensional with the new revelations that the writers make at the end.
Miguel says it and Pedro implies himself that the reason he wants Miguel and Cristóbal out of the picture and family is because they’re, well, them. That is to say, they’re poor and outcasts and don’t deserve to take part in the same social, economic, and familial standing as the Ferrer family.
However, the show then shoehorns the part about Cristóbal being Ángela and Adrían’s step-brother, for absolutely no reason at all. Wouldn’t Cristóbal and Miguel coming from poor backgrounds be reason enough for the psychopathic and tyrannical capitalist Pedro to want them to go away?
Not to mention, that would be so much more reasonable than Cris being Pedro’s wife’s son from an affair. Was he aware of Cris being Carolina’s son from the start? If he did, why did he even allow him to get close to Adrían in the first place?
And what was Pedro’s grand plan anyway? To convince his daughter to divorce, Miguel, by showing her all the sexual affairs he still entertains would not need Camila to be brought to Cartagena. He could just use his money to record evidence of his cheating from all the places he visits on business trips and then present it all to Ángela.
However, he uses so many unnecessary resources and money to achieve what could have been achieved with far less of both of them and risks. He could simply use Cris’s relationship with Adrían to get them to break their relationship as well. He doesn’t do any of that, and his grand voyeuristic plan ends up seeming rather absurd and full of holes.
None of the characters in the show inspires genuine empathy, and even with a character like David who is by far the most morally healthy, the show writes him so poorly that he just comes across as a prop for Camila.
Meanwhile, the direction in Fake Profile is also really poor, and with the abysmal writing, it all seems like a haphazard stab at the soap opera formula trying to cater to the streaming sensibilities and failing.
Verdict
Fake Profile starts off with an intriguing premise and shows great potential, only to lose all the steam as the story progresses with under-written characters and over-written twists and turns, which for the most part are incredibly obvious and when not, incredibly unnecessary.
Fake Profile
Director: Katalina Hernández, Klych López
Date Created: 2023-05-31 12:30
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Also Read: Fake Profile summary and ending explained