The Ferpect Crime (2004)

Simply Perfect

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Fantastic!

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

CRIMEN FERPECTO is a Spanish film by Alex de La Iglesa that mixes the black comedy with the crime-thriller genre.It's about a man that always got what he wanted, especially about women (someone like a "Casanova"…) and had no scruples to get it. But one day after he killed his boss accidentally, his life turns around, as a woman that he always despised blackmailed him, and turned his life into a living hell. How? Forcing him to love her and doing everything she wanted to! It has two or three good metaphors about the way people relate nowadays and the decadent values of our society, but it's essentially a comedy so it takes these issues with sarcasm and irony. One great example is LOURDES family: a completely dysfunctional family that seems to be taken from a 70's Italian movie! LOURDES (played by Monica Cervera) is completely bizarre and paranoid herself, making RAFAEL (Guillermo Toledo), the main character, look like a victim… that he's definitely not! Mentioning a very famous quote: in this movie "no one is innocent"… So, the film is not "ferpect", I mean perfect, but it's very good, and funny, in an effective way!

Alex de la Iglesia is one of the most daring Spanish directors working today. Right from the start we must confess we don't particularly care for his style in his previous films. With the exception of "La Ciudadela" and this savagely funny comedy, "Ferpect Crime", the others don't measure up to the quality of these two. The director must be forgiven for the excesses of the past. In a way, this film shows a lot of control, something his previous work didn't have.The result is one of the funniest movies that came from Spain recently. We didn't get a chance to see it in its commercial run, since it didn't last too long in local theaters. The story is a modern fable about what lengths human beings go in order to succeed. Never mind that in order to attain one's goal involves murdering your enemy.Rafael, a personable salesman at Yeyo's department store, has a rivalry going with Don Antonio, who is also assigned to the same floor. Both men hope their sales will make their superiors value the best and make him floor manager. When Antonio wins, because he discovers an irregularity on Rafael's sales receipts, the losing candidate vows to avenge being humiliated by the other man.Rafa, who is a ladies' man, doesn't have a clue about to what extent will Leonor go to claim him for herself. Leonor is a rather homely woman who is the epitome of efficiency. She has witnessed Rafa's sexual involvement with some of the other sales women and she happens to be at the right place, at the right time when Don Antonio suffers a fatal stroke. Leonor will stop at nothing, and Rafael must pull away from this woman who wants to own him at all costs. When he does, little does he know what a genius Leonor turns out to be on her own.The best thing in the film are Guillermo Toledo and Monica Cervera. As Rafael and Leonor, these actors make a wonderful team under the director's guidance. Ms. Cervera reminds us of another actress with a peculiar look in the Spanish cinema, Rosy DePalma, another excellent comedienne. Mr. Toledo and Ms. Cervera are worth the price of the DVD as they are fantastic in the film.Alex de la Iglesia should stay in this course when directing other film.

This Italian comedy starts out well and prospers until about mid-way through, after the "crime" is committed, when the handsome hero, who is surrounded by gorgeous young women whom he regularly beds, is saved by the ugly (and repulsive) duckling. Thereafter, the pursuit by his rescuer and the hero's attempts to get away become repetitive and increasingly unfunny. I give this movie a 5, and -- in my estimation -- that's exceedingly generous. One thing in the film's favor, however, is that the subtitles are very easy to read. In a lot of foreign films, unfortunately, that is not the case, and although one has a general sense of what's going on, the dialog frequently gets lost if you don't happen to understand the language well enough to follow along.

Rafael (Guillermo Toledo) is a Casanova and makes no apologies for it. Having worked in retail for a department store similar to Macy's (YeYo's) he is the Lord of the women's section, a male stud who without being dashing manages to sweep the girls who work there -- and clients -- right off their feet and into sublime desire. We're introduced to him via a staging of a botched sale. Two men enter an all-white stage and playact what would be an angry, difficult client wanting to get something and the salesman who doesn't have the skills to handle him. Then it reverts to the man who is head of an unknown company, and his telling of how no wonder their sales are kaput: they've got a total lack of the ability to convince that the product is worth buying.Enter Rafael. The opening sequence describes all we need to know of who he is. He is a male chauvinist pig who lives in a messy bachelor pad. He struts with the cockiness of a man who owns it all, who's on top of the world. He steals the morning paper from the newsstand and kisses from the passing girl. He aspires to live the high life drenched in luxuries and babes left and right. He works as a salesman at the women's department and has his pick of the lot of the salesgirls, all babes, and the occasional female client whom he seduces into purchasing items from the store. As a matter of fact, to his admission (in a hilarious sex scene) born there: it's his home, who he is.But he has one enemy. One man who can't stand him and marinates in envy at Rafael's apparent success. Don Antonio Fraguas (Luis Varela) is one of those salesmen who have worked all their lives as such and are next in line, via seniority, to achieve the upper realms of management. He's not a nice person by any standards. If there were any other word to describe him, it would be a stuffed old curmudgeon.Both Rafael and Don Antonio, on the death of their supervisor, are competing to be the next floor manager. On the morning where the overall sales of both men will determine who rules the floor, the doors are opened and a flood of people storm the store as if the world were about to go to hell. Rafael seduces a woman -- a difficult buyer -- into getting a lovely mink coat as if he were making love to her. When numbers tally up, Rafael comes up the winner. Or so it seems.A reversal of events take place due to a bad check from Rafael's female client and Don Antonio becomes the floor manager and immediately unleashes his hatred upon Rafael. Things reach a head, Rafael gets fired, they have a fistfight inside one of the fitting rooms... and Don Antonio winds up very dead. And then disappears. And someone knows. And it's the last person anyone would have suspected: the ugly girl whom Rafael has ignored. Lourdes (Monica Cervera). And to top it off... she has an agenda of her own.EL CRIMEN FERPECTO is a clever comedy in the style of early Almodovar, without the sexual reversals. Where Rafael drives the first half of the story, it's Lourdes who makes a powerful transition from invisible frump to monster who holds the cards that can make or break Rafael. Alex de la Iglesia could have made a much different story in which the meat of the plot would have resolved itself in the course of a couple of nights. However in bringing forth Lourdes as a psycho in her own right -- think Alex Forrest, but likable -- who functions as the one who brings Rafael down to Earth while coming into her own, he turns EL CRIMEN FERPECTO into a tale of crazy feminism that sides with those who are ignored by today's beauty obsessed society. A movie that starts and ends in a virtual bang if it's a little too long here and there, this is a growling battle of the sexes with a delicious turning of tables.