I'm really starting to dig Tartan Video. It seems that they're quite separate from their theatrical arm Tartan Films, which seems to just distribute indies to the UK market. Their video branch seems to pick up some quirky foreign releases and bring them to America, like the last release I reviewed,
Sheitan. This latest from Tartan Video, The Perfect Crime, is even better, a comic-noir flick that excels at humor, ingenuity and suspense.
I'm really not sure what took this flick so damn long to come to DVD, though. This Spanish movie, set in Madrid, was released in 2004 and was nominated for 6 Spanish Academy Award nominations, also known as the Goya's. It was released here in the States in August of 2005 in a platform release as well. But, at least we have it now, and this is just a highly entertaining flick, folks.
This flick does start out on a very odd low note, actually. We start with this little salesman training demo with a bumbling salesman failing to sell a suit to a fake customer. The boss starts ranting and raving, saying the guy got 0 out of 100, when someone asks if anyone got a perfect score... and he says one person has, and we get started with the real movie. It's a really dumb way to start, actually, especially since it doesn't tie in with anything else, really. It'd be one thing to have one of those beginnings where you have no idea what's going on and you get it at the end, but this isn't the case here. The good news is, this is very brief and we hop right into the movie from there.
The person that boss was talking about is Rafael Gonzalez (Guillermo Toledo), salesman extraordinaire and head of the Women's Department at a big Madrid department store called Yeyo's. In
High Fidelity-fashion, Rafael starts talking to the camera at us, going over his life and his quest for elegance and extravagance. They don't do the High Fidelity thing throughout, though, and I'm not sure why they just did it for that one part. Anyway, he's supremely confident, knows what he wants and goes after it, which is illustrated in a hillarious scene where he just grabs a sexy woman in the middle of the street and makes out with her for a few minutes. When he gets to his store, we see how he has virtually total command of the gorgeous women who work under him, in every way. The guy's got it pretty damn good, but not quite good enough. He's in a heavy competition for the floor manager's position, going up against the stodgy head of the Men's Department, Don Antonio (Luis Varela). This day's sales will determine the winner and, although Rafael is victorious after a last-minute , big-money sell, his win is taken away the next day when it's learned that the check bounced. Don Antonio and Rafael start arguing in one of the fitting rooms and arguing leads to physicality and physicality leads to Rafael accidentally putting Don Antonio through one of those hooks on the wall. After that, Rafael's life starts to slowly unravel as he deals with this unexpected event, and the homely female co-worker, Lourdes (Monica Cervera) who has secretly lusted for Rafael and witnessed the whole thing. From there we're led down a winding road that we're never sure where it will lead, but we're always sure will be a blast.
While we get simply wonderful performances from Guillermo Toledo, Monica Cervera and Luis Verela, who appears throughout the movie in spirit form, hillariously I might add, the real star of this movie is co-writer/director Alex de la Iglesia. A few of the critic quotes on the case hail de la Iglesia as the next Pedro Almodovar. While that may be, in terms of his nationality, I believe he could be, in terms of his filmmaking ability, the next Joel and/or Ethan Coen. He has such a similar style to the Coens with his snappy comedic dialogue, with help from his co-writer Jorge Guerricaechevarría, and this really odd structure that goes to great lengths to keep you guessing, capped off by an ingenious finale that is just a marvel to watch. Alex de la Iglesia is a director to watch out for, and, not surprisingly, after this magnificent movie, we can see more of him in America with his English-language debut, The Oxford Murders, set for a prime mid-December 2007 release and Think About Disney also, in pre-production.
To sum up, this is a fabulous movie that you should definitely check out if you're a fan of humor, suspense, entertainment and/or all of the frickin' above, because it's a perfectly ferpect blend of all of them.
We don't really get much here. There is the Original Trailer along with four trailers for some other Tartan Video releases, but the only real special feature we get here is The Making of The Perfect Crime. It's a really funny, really bizarre 15-minute look at how they made certain scenes and, really, how much damn fun they all seemed to have making this. We get a great look at how Alex de la Iglesia films certain scenes and, honestly, the guy is just hillarious. It sucks that this is the only feature we get here, but it's well worth a watch.
The Perfect Crime is just a boatload of fun from start (well, after that very first part...) to finish. It's a wonderful roller-coaster of a film where you're not sure when the next turn or the next dip is coming, with a masterful ending that even the Coen's would be proud of.
DVD Release Dates
