Valentina Lorieto is a young Dominican actress who has been cast as the main protagonist, Maria, in the award winning film The Intimate Partner. Born in Santo Domingo on the island of Santo Domingo, Lorieto was raised in New York City and became a successful model and actress in the early part of her career. She has never had a role in an English language film, which is not too surprising considering the lack of experience for an actor portraying a British character in the United States. However, it is still interesting to see a movie like The Intimate Partner, where the actress plays a foreign character, especially since she does play two different kinds of characters in the film, both a Puerto Rican and Dominican. In this article I will look at how this experience has influenced her career and whether or not there is a possibility that we could see such a success in the future.
It is very interesting that the director chose to have Valentina playing a character with a British accent, given the fact that a lot of films had height differences between the characters. There have been instances where a character’s height difference has been used to give the illusion that another character is of a higher or lower class, as is the case in the soap opera, Angel. However, in The Intimate Partner, the director skirts around this issue by having Valentina’s accent come from her Dominican heritage.
In this film, the height difference between the two principal characters is very subtle, making it impossible to notice or take note of. However, the difference in their heights is enough to create a tension in the audience, wondering what is going on between them. This subtle height difference might be used in other films in the future, but given Valentina’s success with The Intimate Partner, it may not be necessary to rely on such a detail. In the end, one must remember that most movies featuring Dominican actors and actresses require height difference, for plot purposes, and not because of quality of performance.