Pictured Rafael ( Guillermo Toledo ) takes his date for a ride through the Yoyes Department Store after hours. Rafael takes Don Antonio ( Luis Verela ) to the incinerator room.
Rafael ( Guillermo Toledo ) is the ultimate metrosexual. A style snob, he has fashioned the ladies department of the upscale Madrid department store that he heads into his own little universe. 'I'm just an elegant man who wants to live in an elegant world. Is that asking too much?' he bemoans as he heads into work one morning, tsk-tsking over the tacky people he passes on the street. After greeting a luscious crop of James Bond type sales girl beauties, all vying for his attention, he sneers through the clothing racks at his bitter rival. This is the bewigged and effete Don Antonio ( Luis Valrela ) , manager of the men's department and Rafael's sole competitor for the coveted Floor Manager position. After being bested by his rival, Rafael flies into a rage and accidentally kills him in the dressing room but with a little luck, he may have committed El Crimen Perfecto ( the Perfect Crime ) .
With this premise, we are off and running in Alex de la Iglesia's hilarious acid black comedy. Naturally, there has been a witness to Rafael's crime and it turns out to be the homely, ill-mannered Lourdes ( Monica Cervera ) , the one sales clerk that the smug Rafael has pointedly ignored. Lourdes is one of those unloved groupies starving for attention from their Beloved and she's not beneath blackmail to get what she wants—and upping the demands with each new triumph ( the picture could be called Revenge of the Ugly Duckling ) . Desperate, Rafael plans to kill Lourdes and resume his old life of sartorial bliss.
Iglesia is being hailed as the new Almodóvar for this and his earlier films that I haven't seen. The comparison, based on the evidence here, is apt. In true Almodóvar fashion, the film is shot in bright, fluorescent colors and is acted and cut at a slapstick pace. Iglesia has also rounded up a group of actors who attack their roles with zest ( with Toledo and Cervera topping the list ) and could just as easily walk onto the set of the next Almodóvar. Other film directors are referenced throughout the movie as well, with Hitchcock the most obvious influence. The music score, especially, sounds as if Hitchcock's collaborator Bernard Herrmann had composed it. And the broad stroke of having the ghost of the dead, ghoulishly green Don Antonio offering advice to Rafael is straight out of Tim Burton's Beetlejuice. A nice touch.
Iglesia's career, ironically, has mirrored the competitive setup from The Perfect Crime—and the comparisons may increase when Almodóvar, who is working on his first full out comedy in years, releases his next film. If it's anything nearly as funny as Iglesia's movie, the audience will be the real winner. Subtitled. www.landmarktheatres.com .
_____
Wong Kar-wai, writer-director of the sensuous art house hit In the Mood for Love, is back with 2046, another treatise on love that is breathtakingly shot, scored and acted.
Tony Leung Chiu Wai again plays Chow Mo Wan, the hedonistic, skirt-chasing journalist ( and spiritual brother to Marcello Mastroianni in La Dolce Vita ) in late '60s Hong Kong. Chow Mow Wan ( who sports a Clark Gable mustache ) is now writing a science-fiction novel set in the year 2046 ( the year that Hong Kong reverts to China ) . It's also the hotel room of a memorable affair with Su Li Zhen ( Li Gong ) . Now he lives next door in 2047 in the fabulously beat up Oriental Hotel ( a Hong Kong equivalent to New York's Chelsea it would seem ) . When a beautiful prostitute Bai Ling ( Zhang Ziyi ) moves in, naturally an intense affair begins. Interspersed between that affair and another, Chow Mow Wan works on his novel, and a love affair from the book between its protagonist and a stunning robot is also acted out on a train that literally circles the globe.
The film, unlike the speeding train, moves very slowly ( indeed, there's a fair amount of slow-motion camera work ) and most of it is shot in close up ( usually, with half the frame in soft focus ) . The color palette is impossibly rich with apple greens and deep shades of gold at the forefront. As a narrative, the film is stultifying—closer to Last Year at Marienbad than Last Tango in Paris—but fans of the director's work will not be disappointed. Kar-wai's famous eye for detail and color, his exquisite compositions, and his amazing ear ( the soundtrack is gorgeous ) are all in place. A film this carefully crafted, I suspect, should be listed in the 'art exhibit' section. Subtitled. www.musicboxtheatre.com .
_____
Piper Perabo has the only sequence with a modicum of suspense and originality in the dumb dumb deepwater monster scare picture, The Cave, but it's not reason enough to venture out to the Cineplex. Here's the creaky plot: deep below the Carpathian Mountains is an underwater cave that for unfathomable reasons ( it's as murky as the water itself ) , a crew of topnotch deep sea divers is called upon to explore. Naturally, humanoid creatures, not unlike those found in Humanoids of the Deep, Deep Star Six, Leviathan, Deep Rising, Alien Resurrection, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, are waiting to reel in the delectable divers and have them for dinner.
Perky Perabo is joined by a cast of pumped-up gym dandies that look ( and act ) like they might be more comfortable on the set of the next Chi Chi LaRue porn epic. Perhaps this is The Cave's greatest flaw—all those gorgeous men playing deep sea divers and not one stitch of clothes gets removed, not one bare torso is revealed. Unfortunately, when one watches a movie this predictable ( and this bereft of camp ) , it all comes down to mentally begging for a shot of a guy with his shirt off. Uh-huh—it was that bad.
_____
Local Film Event: Sister Jeannine Gramick, who has struggled with the Catholic Church over ministering to the GLBT community, has had her experiences documented in the film In Good Conscience: Sister Jeannine Gramick's Journey of Faith. It will be screened, followed by a lecture from Sister Jeannine, on Wednesday, Aug. 31 at 7 p.m. at the St. Luke's Episcopal Church, 939 Hinman St. ( corner of Hinman and Lee ) in Evanston. Admission is free but donations are welcome.
