What's a
poor, hormone-driven 16-year-old girl going to do when she meets
the drop-dead handsome priest, newly assigned to her parish in a
town on the outskirts of Mexico City? If drop-dead fits into
your answer, you would not be incorrect. Carlos Carrera's
strongly anti-clerical film based on an 1875 Portuguese novel by
Maria Eca de Queiroz is yet another contribution to the almost
annual church-bashing fete which this year includes Costa-Gavras’
boldly assertive Amen (about the refusal of the pope to
speak out against the Holocaust). The misdeeds of the church
officials in the town of Los Reyes are in no way comparable to
the World War 2 failings of the church father, but considering
the extent of the corruption, one which pervades a large
proportion of the town's priests, including the obese bishop,
Carrera's indictment is a powerful one.
The title
character is Father Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal), a 24- year-old
idealist who along with his fellow bus passengers is robbed by a
gang of gun-toting highwaymen and who on disembarking promptly
gives his elderly seat mate some money to start his business.
Father Amaro will prove to me no tragic hero but a young
innocent, believing himself to be in position to take over the
small but well-endowed parish upon the coming retirement of
Father Benito (Sancho Gracia)-provided that he does his job and
is recommended by Benito to the bishop (Ernesto Gomez Cruz).
Amaro is astonished to find that the church bureaucracy is in
the pocket of drug lords who donate money to the church, pesos
which are freely accepted on the grounds that there's nothing
wrong with putting "bad money into good deeds."
That's the
least of Amaro's difficulties. When the town guapa, 16-year-old
old Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancon), makes goo-goo eyes, Amaro's
lust gets the better of him, and why not? The guy he is
scheduled to replace, Father Benito, has been enjoying a
long-term affair with Amelia's mom, Sanjuanera (Angelica
Aragon), but informs his protege that his sexual relationship is
"not the same thing" as the young man's.
El
Crimen del Padre Amaro shows the clerics violating the
letter and spirit of the Ten Commandments by fornicating,
consorting with thieves, and threatening excommunication against
the likes of a "liberation" priest who caters to a communal
group called "guerrillas" by the bureaucrats. When Amelia's
disappointed boyfriend Ruben exposes the money laundering,
Father Amaro carries a message from the bishop threatening to
call a boycott of the newspaper's sponsors unless they put a
false, large-print retraction of the charges on the front page.
El
Crimen del Padre Amaro is now Mexico's biggest box-office
hit of movies turned out by the homegrown industry, following on
the heels of its principal actor's two other stunners, the
violent "Amores Perros" and the erotic Y Tu Mama Tambien.
We suspect that the satiric element is not the principal reason
for the popularity, but rather the wallowing in sex that
actually undercuts the parody in the service of big box office.
Though the eroticism is hardly as kinky as that featured in,
say, Femme Fatale, it
serves to bring in the crowds, and Carrera satisfies his
audience all around with a conclusion that one-ups even
Moliere's anticlerical play Tartuffe. If you want to find
morally bankrupt people, you'll find them, of course, among the
drug lords and criminals. To witness deeds of immorality
pervasive in the very group that we trust to raise us
spiritually is the movie's edge, and Carrera finds his truth
dramatically and credibly with the help of a crackerjack team of
performers.
