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EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO Send This Review to a Friend
A blunt expose of practices and hypocrisy of priests, even involving drug-money laundering, cover-ups and abortion, makes the new Mexican film "El Crimen del Padre Amaro" topical dynamite. Although more a melodramatic potboiler than an artistic achievement, this film is fascinating for the power and volatility of its subject matter. No wonder it brewed controversy in Mexico.
Popular new actor Gael García Bernal, who rose to acclaim for his performance in "Y Tu Mama Tambien," is back, this time as Father Amaro, a young priest who arrives at a small parish church in Los Reyes to take up his post. One of the first things he learns is that Father Benito (Sancho Gracia), who is in charge, has a mistress, a widow who is raising a nubile 16-year-old daughter.
Before long the daughter, Amelia, played sexily by beautiful Ana Claudia Talancón, gets the hots for Father Amaro, who after token resistance succumbs. But he needs a trysting place. He duplicitously tells the father of a mentally and physically retarded young girl to whom he is administering that he needs to secretly prepare Amelia for becoming a nun and thus acquires a room for their assignations. Is it any surprise that she becomes pregnant?
How all this is resolved further flies in the face of church teachings and rules, and as if that weren't daring enough, the resolution of an ensuing tragedy ends on a thoroughly hypocritical note. Oh yes, Father Benito is in cahoots with a kingpin drug dealer by letting him launder money with contributions to the new health center the priest is building.
Director Carlos Carrera, working from a screenplay by Vicente Leñero, has a heavy hand, but the drama nevertheless has strong impact because of the unflinching treatment that begs controversy and feeds into current traumas regarding church scandals wherever they may occur. A Samuel Goldwyn Films release.
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