Perdita Durango

Being a huge Barry Gifford fan, having enjoyed De La Iglesia's Day of the Beast, and of the opinion that Wild at Heart was one of the best novel to film adaptations in the history of cinema, needless to say, my expectations for this movie were very high. I couldnt have imagined it being so satisfying.

De La Iglesia's adaptation of Perdita Durango takes its liberties but (like Wild At Heart) finds its inspiration in the original source material without destroying the spirit.

Romeo and Perdita carve their way through the world with violence, magic, and sex. They are sadistic, perverse, and perfect for each other. From their first fateful meeting, to their kidnapping of two suburban white kids, to driving a truck full of fetus destined to be black market makeup, it is a dark destiny, a collision of two black souls. If the movie has any message, it is that even the most wicked person has a diabolic soulmate. Love does not discriminate.

The performances are great. Javier Bardem as Romeo was totally unrecognizable as the same guy who played the stud in Jamon, Jamon. He plays Romeo as charming, self preserving, and almost noble killer because of his beliefs in darkness, sacrifice, revenge, and amoral spirituality. My fears of Rosie Perez, an actress I am not fond of in any way, were unfounded as she embodied Perdita perfectly with sadism and sizzle. James Gandolfini, as the Wile E Coyote like DEA agent Dumas, was also very good, perpetually abused and doggedly determined.

De La Iglesia handles with the film with great skill. The pacing is fast and furious. Every scene is alive with energy, and his composition is masterful. He has vastly improved from the flawed, yet entertaining, Day of the Beast, and demonstrates that his is a talent that continues to grow. Given the proper material and time, I can see him providing a enjoyable body of manic, surreal, and outrageous work.

Right after the success of his masterpiece, the dark comedy "El Dia De la Bestia", Spanish director Alex De la Iglesia took a stab at Hollywood with this wild ride of marvelous insanity and bizarre entertainment. Sadly, the resulting movie was severely cut in the U.S. and the U.K. and didn't had the expected results as many labeled as another Tarantino-style film. While at first sight "Perdita Durango" indeed looks like a rip off of the movies by the Tarantino-Rodriguez tandem, this really black comedy is more a witty satire than a serious action flick.

The film is the story of Perdita Durango (Rosie Perez), a young criminal who one night meets Romeo Dolorosa (Javier Bardem), a crazed priest of an extreme form of Santeria who makes a life doing jobs for the mob. They fall in love and Perdita comes along in Romeo's latest job: the traffic of human fetuses for the cosmetic industry. On their trip, they kidnap two American teenagers for Romeo's human sacrifices. However, things go wrong as a DEA agent (James Gandolfini) follows them closely and the kidnapped teens try to escape.

Based on Barry Gifford's novel of the same name, the movie follows the criminal couple's adventure in the style of a road trip movie with the two couples (the criminals and their victims) as main characters. I can't tell how faithful the movie is to the novel, but it is definitely closer to Gifford's previous film adaptation, David Lynch's "Wild at Heart" than to the Tarantino films that are often compared to it. The movie is charged with black humor and disturbing violence, and is a brilliant satire of modern society.

Alex De la Iglesia crafts a film that is at the same time disturbing and funny, and he plays with those two very different emotions with very good results. The pacing of the movie is very good although it is true that at times it feels a bit disjointed. Still, De la Iglesia manages to tell an intelligent and different story than what we are used to. On a side note, the edited A-Pix version is missing what is probably the most important moment of the film due to copyright troubles, so to fully appreciate the film, the 125 version is the way to go.

The acting is good for the most part, with Javier Bardem showing exactly why is he considered the best Spanish actor of his generation; his Romeo Delarosa is one of the best performances of his career. Rosie Perez is effective, but at times it feels as if she weren't up to the challenge, something that hurts the film badly, as she is the main character. Harley Cross and Aimee Graham are very believable as the kidnapped teens and show potential for comedy, but the real joy comes from supporting actors Gandolfini and a surprising Screamin' Jay Hawkins.

Personally, I liked the film a lot and it is a personal favorite, but I must be fair and point out that it is not a perfect film. Alex De la Iglesia's main mistake is to focus too much on Romeo Delarosa's character, almost to the point where Rosie Perez almost becomes a supporting actress. The fact that Bardem's acting is enormously superior doesn't really help Perez' performance. On another point, the movie seems to lose steam at the last point, and while it does recover some of its initial power, the edited versions definitely take out this final improvement.

As written above, this is a personal favorite, and while I wouldn't recommend it to everybody (due to its disturbing images), I would definitely recommend it to fans of black comedies, disturbing thrillers and overall bizarre film-making in general. 8/10

Álex de la Iglesia's Perdita Durango (1997) is an outrageously wild and violent road movie that has greater premise than the actual film. The film is based on the Barry Gifford book as was David Lynch's film Wild at Heart (1990), too, and the character Perdita is the lead character in Iglesia's film whereas she had only a small part in Lynch's much more noteworthy film.

Perdita Durango (Rosie Perez) is an attractive and exotic Mexican girl with violent past and future, as we soon learn. She meets mysterious Romeo Dolorosa (Javier Bardem) who practises some strange and bloody voodoo/Satanism rituals and also needs human victims for his acts he performs for and with some cult. They team up, and start their violent journey near the border of Mexico and the USA in order to steal a huge truck carrying loads of human fetuses for some sleazy pedophiliac mafia boss. Yes it sounds very outrageous and once all the characters are introduced the level of wildness reaches its most breathtaking level.

The film is pretty empty in content for sure, unlike David Lynch's film, for example. It has one quite funny bit of commentary about stupid mediocre TV audience that gets its meaning for life through various TV shows and commercialism related to it, and that is exactly the kind of humor that can be found in Iglesia's another outrageous (gore) comedy Acción Mutante (1993). But mostly Perdita Durango seems to concentrate on sudden and rather shocking bursts of violence and steamy sex that will definitely annoy censors throughout the world. There is a silent moment at the end which tells something about what is happening inside the character's head and what she has learnt but still it could have been a whole serious theme for the film. Also the way how the kidnapped couple change in their dangerous situation is quite repulsive as in that world it seems like the more selfish and mean you are the more you will succeed and survive. The young couple is not used as it should have been if Iglesia would have liked to include some serious and dramatic elements to the film and characters and thus make a more noteworthy piece of powerful film.

The other characters are also very nasty and perverse, completely unable to control their violent and sexual instincts, but they are also quite blackly humorous (the mafia boss, the two FBI agents etc.) and so the tone of the film is not too serious at all. Most of the characters are just animals in the burning heat of the border trying to exploit and survive from each other. Romeo's character is definitely as wicked as they come but still he is far from the effect of Willem Dafoe in Lynch's film, where the character was the other side of human nature, whereas Igleasia never seems to be interested in depicting things so deep in this film. His characters are just bad, violent, miserable and selfish scumbags and there are not too many, or any, normal and safe feeling individuals in the film. The FBI caricature played by a film maker Alex Cox (Repo Man) is quite funny and makes fun on all the serious agent characters of the cinematic history.

The film is far from the greatness of Iglesia's wonderful El Dia de la Bestia aka The Day of the Beast (1995) with its philosophic elements and incredible atmosphere with great visuality. Perdita hasn't got any genuinely interesting and inventive camerawork or cinematic magic and even the rites Romeo commits are not as chilling as in, for example, Wes Craven's Serpent and the Rainbow (1987). The soundtrack by Simon Boswell is mediocre, nothing too special in my opinion even though the director praises his work for this film and in general very much. He is a talented composer but his soundtrack for this film is not so memorable.

I saw the most uncut (minus one 3 seconds image of the mafia boss slapping the face of a little girl, still this brief image is in the Spanish festival print) version released on DVD in Germany, and as far as I know, the Spanish tape is like this DVD, too. But all the other versions released, like the Hong Kong, UK, US, Swedish, Finnish and so on versions on VHS and DVD are severely cut for sex, violence and drug use. The "uncut" version I saw is quite strong at times and includes some scenes of extreme and vicious violence that are also more or less gratuitous to say the least, as well as the numerous sex scenes, but they definitely tell something about the brute instincts of the characters as mentioned. Overall the humor in this film is very black and just plain sick and that comes clear at least with the numerous car crash deaths in the film, so Iglesia is definitely not depicting his characters too heroic or lucky in their ways of life!

Perdita Durango is not deep or meaningful film enough but the ending saves the film from even greater failure. Many will find this entertaining as it has graphic violence, "cool" characters, sex and other forbidden taboos on screen, but if one is looking for a film that has something to say and really concentrate on it so that we can call it a theme, then Perdita Durango is not among the best. Still it could have been so much worse, with bad and stupid actors and characters and boring segments: now it runs 124 PAL minutes but never really feels boring or too long so Iglesia's way to tell the story and cut all the unnecessary parts off is present here. He definitely is a talented director but manages to achieve more than 6/10, too.

I picked up DANCE WITH THE DEVIL at the local video store, basically because Rosie Perez was on the cover holding a double-barrel shotgun. Need I say more? Okay I will. Originally titled "Perdita Durango" after Rosie's character, this is one twisted, shocking, and absolutely fantastic film. Although a little on the low budget-side, it definitely makes up for it with a killer script and terrific performances from the entire cast. It was based on the novel by Barry Gifford who also co-wrote the screenplay. You might remember him from writing David Lynch's films WILD AT HEART and LOST HIGHWAY. Although Perdita is the main character of the film, there is little known about who she really is and what she is all about. Javier Bardem basically steals the show through his intense performance as Romeo, the devil with the rattlesnake boots. Of course we cannot forget James "Tony Soprano" Gandolfini who delivers a great role as a narcotics detective. Like some kind of twisted cross between NATURAL BORN KILLERS and DESPERADO, this film never lets up from start to finish. It's definitely a contemporary cult classic chock full of violence, sex, drugs, dark humor, voodoo, and......Hey I don't want to give it all away, just see it!!!

"Perdita Durango"(1997)made by Alex de la Iglesia is a perfect mix of sex and violence.The film is well-made and interesting-the action is fast and there is plenty of nasty violence on display.The acting is very good-Rosie Perez shines as a rough Perdita and Javier Bardem is equally memorable as her companion Romeo.There are also some moments of black humour which make the film easier to watch.All in all I enjoyed "Perdita Durango" and you should too,if you're a fan of Iglesia's works.However I still think that "Accion Mutante" and "The Day of the Beast" are better movies.My rating:7/10.