El Crimen Perfecto - Palm Beach Post movie review

'El Crimen Perfecto': Criminally amusing

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

Languages and cultures may differ, but there is something universal about film noir and the felonious lengths that a man will go to because of a woman. When the point is illustrated by such a skillful, puckish storyteller as Spain's Alex de la Iglesia in a black comedy like El Crimen Perfecto (The Perfect Crime), the result is sublime entertainment.

Panico Films

'El Crimen Perfecto'

A-

The verdict: Giddy film noir, Spanish-style, about a department store cad's comeuppance.

Director: Alex de la Iglesia
Starring: Enrique Villen, Fernando Tejero, Guillermo Toledo, Monica Cervera
Run time: 103 minutes
Release date: August 19, 2005
Rating: Not Rated
Language: Spanish, with English subtitles

On the web
Official movie site

With a visual flash that brings to mind Jean Pierre Jeunet (Amelie), de la Iglesia offers the sad saga of department store lothario Rafael (Guillermo Toledo), who runs the women's clothing department of a Madrid retail store by day and beds his comely female sales clerks by night, often inside the store. It is an ideal life, but Rafael yearns for the more lucrative job of floor manager. When he is beaten out for the position by a petty, badly toupee-clad rival, Rafael could just kill him.

Getting away with it is another matter, especially since Lourdes (Monica Cervera), the one homely employee in Rafael's department, sees the violent deed and blackmails him into marriage. But first she proves her passion for him with a simple gesture — hacking up the dead body and incinerating it in the store's basement furnace. Ah, love.

Toledo's Rafael is a preening, supremely confident cad, the kind that is so much fun to watch get his comeuppance.

The comedy reaches diminishing returns in the movie's final act, but until it does, El Crimen Perfecto is criminally amusing.