Product Description

A recently ordained priest is caught between the divine and the carnal when he finds himself in a passionate affair with a beautiful young woman. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 12/21/2004 Run time: 119 minutes Rating: R Director: Carlos Carrera

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17603 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2003-04-22
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 118 minutes

Amazon.com
This controversial film follows a handsome young priest, Padre Amaro (played by Gael Garcia Bernal from Y Tu Mamá También and Amores Perros), who arrives in a small town and finds himself surrounded by hypocrisy and corruption--and also finds himself tempted by a beautiful young woman who confesses that when she "touches herself," she thinks of Jesus. What makes El Crimen del Padre Amaro (The Crime of Father Amaro) particularly effective is that Amaro is no innocent--he skillfully forces a newspaper publisher to retract a scandalous story about the Church and is willing to take extreme steps to preserve his career. Some of the movie's harsher digs at the Catholic Church have provoked accusations of prejudice; but though Padre Amaro portrays a world in which no one's hands are clean, it also finds redeeming qualities in every character. A complex, completely engrossing movie. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
When the Catholic authorities in Mexico got wind of this movie, which tells of the affair between a young priest and a sixteen-year-old virgin, they threatened to excommunicate its two young stars. Bad move. A curious and aroused public turned out in droves to see exactly how Father Amaro (Gael García Bernal) and Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancón) would go about breaking the seventh commandment. To be sure, there's a fair amount of steamy sacrilege, but it's not quite the last tango the trailer would lead you to expect. The director, Carlos Carrera, turns out to be a man of serious intent, portraying the Catholic church as a fallible institution, inextricably linked, for better or worse, to all levels of Mexican society. This is done mostly through the compromised life of an older priest, Father Benito (played, with dignity, by the veteran actor Sancho Gracia), who has a mistress and a cozy relationship with the local drug lord. The story's many strands require a deft touch, and not surprisingly the movie gets away from Carrera; the second half devolves into soap-opera plotting and scenes transparently designed for maximum shock value. In Spanish. -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

The Best of the New Mexican Cinema!!
I loved Amores Perros (once I got over the dog fighting) and Y Tu Mama Tambien - to be honest, I did not expect El Crimen del Padre Amaro to come anywhere close to these two gems. I was happily mistaken. The acting was magnificent, the directing apt, and the setting eminently appropriate to the subject matter. The film, based on a Portuguese novel written in 1875, is very apt not only in the context of the Mexican Catholic Church but also in light of recent events in the North American Catholic Church. The film addresses many issues facing the church - celibacy being the most advertised, but also liberation theology, women's rights, corruption, and the church hierarchy in itself. Though it deals specifically with the Catholic Church, this film reaches viewers of all faiths, and its relevance to today's society cannot be stressed enough.

Now on to the more specific comments on the DVD version. I found the *extras* to be interesting, especially the movie trailers, but I found the Making-of to be a disappointment in that it did not offer much insight into the process of making the film. The commentary, on the other hand, I did find to be interesting and useful. Overall, the film itself overcomes any flaws in the DVD presentation.

If you have not seen this film yet, you need to. It will not be 2 hours wasted.

An Amazingly Powerful Film
EL CRIMEN DEL PADRE AMARO packs a wallop on many levels. Based on an 1875 novel, this story of the gradual downfall of an idealistic young priest sent out into the reality of the clerical world in the small villages in Mexico updated to contemporary times is unrelentingly fascinating, visually stunning, uncompromisingly frank in its stance on Catholic decadence, and directed and acted with finesse. Gael Garcia Bernal continues to mature as an actor and as a screen presence, making his Padre Amaro metamorphose from committed innocent to fallen sparrow in a wholly credible fashion. Despite our sadness with his bad decisions and choices, Bernal is able to keep us with this complex young priest and in doing so we are able to clearly examine the fragmented state of affairs in the hands of various priests tainted with lust, pride, sloth and a bit of each of the seven deadly sins. Director Daniel Carrera knows how to create both spectacular and intimate scenes and he masterfully leads his gifted cast through a more than difficult story.

If there is a tendency to berate this film for its anticlerical stance, then the point of the story is missed. Each of the myriad characters, sacred and profane alike, has a soul of good and one of vulnerability, and given the current tenuous state of the Catholic Church under seige, I think this film helps explain how even men of the cloth can be human. Kudos for Gael Garcia Bernal, Ana Claudia Talancion, Damian Alcazar and all of the fine cast and crew that created this very impressive and disturbing piece of art.

The Sacred and the Profane
Father Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal) arrives at his new assignment in a small town in Mexico with fervor for Catholicism and a deep and abiding desire to do good. But, regardless of Father Amaro�s calling and his innate goodness, he is of the year 2002: a young man in his twenties with contemporary ideas who, on the one hand respects the traditions of the Church yet on the other, yearns for change. In a meeting with his superior, Padre Benito (Sancho Gracia) asks:�don�t you think the Church should do away with its vow of Celibacy.� Later on in the story he tells Padre Benito that he took the vow because he was forced to, not because he believed in it.
This clash between the old traditions of the Church and the new thoughts of the young are at the very core of �El Crimen del Padre Amaro.� What�s also very interesting is that this film is based on a story that was written in 1845! This eternal battle between the old and the new, the religious and the carnal has been going on in the Catholic Church for many hundreds if not thousands of years.
The best thing about this film is the very �Mexican-ness� of it: the beauty of the Mexican people and the charm of its towns and the beauty of it�s landscape, the attitude of Rome towards the Mexican Catholics, the necessary yet tortured role of the priests who work among the guerillas, the drug lords and the indigenous people. This film is the third major Mexican film to be released in the United States recently, along with �Amores Perros� and �Y Tu Mama Tambien.� Oddly enough all three films also star Gael Garcia Bernal who is fast becoming the Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt/Edward Norton of Mexico. There is no doubt that Bernal has the acting chops and the looks to be a major international star and like the three mentioned above he is a major �presence� on the screen: his physical body and his soul are luminescent�literally glow from within.
Unfortunately, �Amaro� is not in the same league as �Amores� or �Mama.� It�s a rather turgid melodrama and except for Bernal and Ana Claudia Talancon (Amelia), the acting is soap opera quality. Also, Padre Amaro�s transition from the sacred to the worldly is done so quickly and without much character-driven motivation that it simply doesn�t ring true. And, as a sidelight�is it any wonder that this film caused a furor in Mexico with the image on the film�s poster of Padre Amaro, in his clerical collar, and Amelia necking in a church pew? On the one hand it is shocking and on the other it is very smart marketing.
�El Crimen del Padre Amaro� is valuable as a political document in that it calls for substantial and humanistic reform. It�s a shame that it�s director, Carlos Carrera didn�t surround the political with the dramatic in a more profound and artistic manner.