I just endured a stinging disappointment. Tonight, I wrangled five friends into seeing a screening of The Crime of Father Amaro, a Mexican film that I thought held much promise because its star is Gael Garcia Bernal, the compact hottie of Amores Perros and Y Tu Mama Tambien. But, alas. He was a heartless, soulless, low character, and even his hotness failed to redeem him. Because he was such a cowardly bastard, and ignored any and all plot opportunities to move in a different direction, the film was infuriating. He seemed so nice at the start, but then, it was easy for him to be nice at the start. When it was easier for him to be a bit of a shit, he was a bit of a shit. And then a big shit. I just glared at the screen, my mind screaming for him to make the right choice, to do what his heart told him. Help the girl! Help the revolutionaries, damnit! You know you want to! It didn't happen. His heart wasn't even involved. Bastard.

Even the character of the young woman of the piece, though you believed that her love and trust was genuine, lacked something. Her decisions seemed less based in her specific personality and more in an idea of how a devout woman in a small town might behave were these the circumstances of her life. This is really what she was, an idea of a person. The film did not really draw her a specific personality. Her particular her-ness wasn't really demonstrated to us. And the same went for the other characters. They seemed like ideas of people. As Leah remarked on the drive home, the film lacked the emotional acuity we had come to expect from recent quality Spanish-language films. Disappointed. But energetically so.

I suppose there must be something to a film that makes you progressively angrier. Maybe it was purposeful, and I have been played somehow. I am still trying to ascertain with some certitude whether it was my high expectations or some technique they deployed that kept me squirming and glaring and trying to find a way out for the characters. Was it all just an intentional scheme to prompt us into analogising about the Catholic Church? Are we to see the Church as we see Father Amaro, as empty, selfish, damaging, cowardly, and with screwy priorities that dismiss the good and entrench the bad? I mean, sure.

Anyway, I left the film seething and repeating "He had no redeeming features! NO REDEEMING FEATURES! Arggh!" But I don't regret seeing it. I'm just not sure that it was good.