Crimen ferpecto
Tags: comedy, satire, murder

Plot synopsis:
Rafael is a model salesman. He is confident, cocky, and enjoys the perks of single life - women, freedom. He is arrogant and women love him. He has or had his way with all the pretty sales girls who work with him. All except one - Lourdes. Everything is going well, and he is pitched against another non-glamorous salesman for the position of floor manager. What should have been a breeze for him to get, turns out to be tougher and his much savored victory, is shortlived when he loses the job to his competitor. His rage prompts him to make snide remarks at the new manager, which results in a scuff and the new manager ends up dead. Though it is an accident, he is forced to cover up his crime, unwittingly because he gets an accomplice in Lourdes, who decides what is right for Rafael. Lourdes has designs for Rafa, and now he is forced to oblige lest she expose him to the cops. This leads him to live the life that was only a nightmare for him till that point. She completely has him wrapped up in her control, with the blackmail, and he grows resentful every day. He gets an adviser from the netherworld, when the dead manager returns with a hatchet on his head to tell him what to do. When Lourdes, decides to force Rafael to marry her, in front of national television, he starts planning the perfect crime. The cops are onto these two, because of the unlikely pairing. Yet they cannot prove it.SPOILER ALERT:
He creates a mayhem by setting fire to the store where Lourdes and he work, and as the cops approach him and Lourdes engaged in a scuffle, he manages to fake his death, making sure Lourdes gets blamed for it. We see him after a few years, running a tie shop under a different identity, only to find that Lourdes is now a successful designer and very rich, with her own quirky clown fashioned outfits.

Review: Rafael, a women's department manager at a Spanish clothing store, is a womanizer concerned only with his own personal advancement and achieving what he believes to be a perfect life, is thwarted by Lourdes, a sales clerk in the same store, and a rather unattractive woman, blackmails Rafael into a relationship, after discovering a secret Rafael cannot have revealed.However, I was pleasantly surprised at how often I laughed out loud.
Crimen Ferpecto moves at a fairly quick pace with lots of entertaining situations.First off, both Guillermo Toledo, as Rafael, and Monica Cervera, as Lourdes are convincing in their portrayals.
Rafael, is, essentially a boorish lout, yet Toledo manages to make him sympathetic at times especially as his entanglement with Lourdes get more and more complicated.
The first half of Crimen Ferpecto working better then the latter half.Also, a standout is Luis Varela as Don Antonio, Rafael's rival in becoming store manager.
Without giving too much away of the plot, his character gets a surreal treatment and haunts Rafael as he attempts to deal with Lourdes.
I thought some of the interplay between Rafael and Don Antonio were among the best in the film.Crimen Ferpecto is light entertainment at it's best.
Guillermo Toledo and Monica Cervera also give stand out performances in their roles as Rafael and Lourdes with Luis Varela, as Don Antonio, backing them up admirably..
While admitting that Ferpect Crime was just about the worst title for a film ever, he told us that this film was about a man who was so obsessed with living a perfect life that it was bound to cause problems.
It's no surprise to learn that the director has a degree in philosophy.Rafael works as a salesman in the ladies' wear section of an upscale department store.
But after losing the promotion to his hated rival Don Antonio, things take a turn for the worse and pretty soon Rafael has a dead body on his hands.
Before long, Lourdes has Rafael wrapped around her finger and his life is far from the model of perfection he has always pursued.
"Crimen ferpecto" is a great surrealistic comedy along the lines of "Being John Malkovich", "One Night at McCools" or even the masterpiece "Brazil".The plot begins bizarre, and from there it gets ever bizarrer.
Set in a department store (the perfect metaphor for the human condition!), this film brilliantly weaves the themes of glamorous/plastic life versus the mundane/real.
Trapped between worlds and desperately trying to achieve the former is our hero Rafael, a man whose entire life exists within the ladies' clothing department.
"Crimen ferpecto" is the deserving follow-up to "La Comunidad", after the failure of "800 balas", and keeps showing the evolution of the director/writer towards creative maturity.Guillermo Toledo plays Rafael, de la Iglesia's best leading male character so far.
It's difficult to find a satisfying ending when one has sympathized with both Rafael and Lourdes, who both have played the roles of "good" and "bad" in turns.
Rafael Gonzalez (Guillermo Toledo), is a salesman in the ladies section of a fashionable department store in Madrid who has it all: good looks, a sharp wardrobe, and a confident, brash manner that allows him to get his way with women and in the workplace.Rafael has clear goals, too, the most important of which is to lead a "perfect life," and little patience for anybody who settles for less.
Such a proud man, of course, is perfectly set up to take a fall and Rafael plunges very far indeed in this hilarious black comedy by Spanish director Alexis de la Iglesia.Rafael's slide begins when a hated rival, Don Antonio (Luis Varlea), wins a coveted promotion.
Rafael's role in the accident goes undetected by the police only because Lourdes (Monica Cevera), an unattractive coworker he has long ignored, helps dispose of the corpse.Lourdes assistance comes with a price.
In short, Rafael is about to be trapped in the kind of dull, mediocre existence he has always mocked.Watching Rafael try to escape from the world Lourdes plans for him  raising children in a badly decorated suburban apartment filled with clown paintings and spending evenings collecting ugly miniatures -- provides lots of laughter and entertainment and plenty of insights into contemporary Spain.
The pacing is fast, well kept though with a few ludicrously foreseeable passages; the cast is really good in painting the characters, almost all of them well performed and denoted, in landscaping the interpersonal relations and the working environment, in adding the zest of surreality which makes the good of the movie but -at the same time- avoiding the downfall into clownesque.
Indeed, there is a clear directorial decision to remove this movie from the "credibility" section, to the surreal/grand-guignol/grotesque side, but the operation is successful, if you do not mind...and if you know where the "FerPecto" inversion comes from, then you'll enjoy it.
Rafael Gonzalez (played by a man who looks like the Spanish Dennis Miller) is a fearless lady's man from the moment he pops on screen and reveals his philosophy on life  he goes for what he wants, and he only wants the best.
His ugly, sex-starved, co-worker Lourdes helps him dispose of the body and cover-up the murder, and then blackmails him for all the sex, love, and affection he can give.
Just when you think Rafael's life can't get any worse, it does, and every new punishment Lourdes inflicts on him is better than the one before.
Spanish language, if well managed, allows movie to get a fast sequence of dialogs and scenes, that fits well black comedy style.
Lourdes is a "clichè" of modern Spanish movies: the ugly, determined and sexual woman, who desires to be loved and struggle to obtain it.
Then put all together in the good environment (the shop: a little world that represent all characters life) and you have a magic movie!.
The scene presentation, the "image", plays an important role and I'd say it's the most grave factor that makes this movie unique.The pace of the movie (regarding the story telling style, not the plot itself) slows down towards the end to leaves space for more roughness and suspense.I really hope to see much more of Alex del la Iglesia in the future because what I got to see yet is always getting even better.8 out of 10..
Roaring and twisted film by the king of black comedy , Alex De La Iglesia.
Lourdes (Monica Cordero) , the ugliest woman in the floor , unexpectedly helps Rafael to hide the corpse , but her help isn't for free .
De la Iglesia is back with a tragical comedy about an ambitious man pursued and blackmailed by a bad woman .
Alex De La Iglesia has created a picture here that in all honesty is very difficult to categorise in terms of genre , as there's a little bit of action , quite a lot of comedy, a good deal of suspense and a host of extreme gruesomeness ; but it does not fit into any one genre very well at all, in truth this is one of the things that makes it good .
"Crimen ferpecto" is one of the funniest movies of the year.Director/co-writer Álex de la Iglesia carries on the wickedly black comedy tradition of Blake Edwards, Billy Wilder and Danny DeVito.
While it is full of social satire -- of consumerism and department stores; of male/female stereotypes, including chauvinist Latin lovers; reality TV -- it is poking fun not polemics.There's much talk about the return of the "R" rated raunchy comedy with "Wedding Crashers" and "The 40 Year Old Virgin," and with plenty of half-naked women and frequent use of the "F" word this would be a hard "R" if it hadn't gone out unrated in the U.S., but it has little of the sentimentality or atonement that weakens those funny films and I would hate to see that tacked on for a Hollywood re-make.
This one is a cheerfully cheeky reprobate from beginning to end, though just about each character gets some kind of comeuppance and revenge in surprising ways.It intentionally spoofs several genres, even having the lead character watch old movies to get noir ideas that he hilariously enacts, as represented by the spoonerism of the title.
While satirizing films with ponderous narration, the voice-overs are very funny as the wonderful Guillermo Toledo, who segues from suave to frenetic, suddenly looks to the camera and asks "Oh no, can you hear me?" Mónica Cervera matches him as his nemesis in surprisingly spirited ways.The sight gags and pratfalls abound but that just helps to keep the frantic pace up so you don't stop laughing from one crazy situation to the next.
But the direction emphasizes the humor with zooming close-ups and dizzying movement so it stays laugh out loud hilarious, from belly laughs to chuckles, even when the sight gags have been seen many times before.The colorful production design heightens the unreality of the department store and shopping mall where most of the film takes place.
A very funny Spanish film, and I share the opinion of a previous reviewer: why didn't this movie receive more play in the USA?
This film creates hilarity in so many directions that it's hard to categorize it as mere comedy (the director has something to say about the mores of society, too.) Let's hope Hollywood doesn't bowdlerize any remake into something pallid, p.c.-- and forgettable.Fine acting, an entertaining script with cleverly-translated subtitles, consistent laughs, and a satisfying ending make this movie a worthy pick!.
De la Iglesia has come up with a pastiche of good ideas from pre-existing, classic movies, and stuck them together into "El crimen ferpecto".
The gaudy sets and primary colors are a dead ringer for Almodovar movies, the cops with their mannerisms are pure Hitchcock, and the ending is a straight rip-off from Fellini's "8 1/2"---the only missing thing there is Nino Rota's score, although they substituted that by something equivalent.The result is a movie that you will have a good time watching, but about which you'll forget all 2 days later.On the positive side, it's a funny dark comedy.
A sidesplitter about a skirt chaser who works as a salesman in the women's wear section of an upscale department store and is bucking for the job of floor manager.
Rafael is not only the best salesman in the biggest department store in Madrid but an irresistible lady's man whose female colleagues cannot get enough of.
Lourdes, the ugliest woman in the store, the only witness to the event, volunteers to help Rafael hide the corpse.
-- as ghastly visions of Don Antonio with a knife protruding from his green head come back to haunt him regularly -- Because of the bungling all around the director purposely misspells the Perfecto (perfect) of the title so it becomes "Ferpecto" -- and the Perfect Crime becomes most imperfect.-A super hilarious black comedy from start to finish with plenty of subliminal social commentary embedded in the madness and deliciously sly rib-tickling work by actor Guillermo Toledo.
One of the funniest films I have ever seen and Toledo's Rafael is one for the all-time comic record books.
CRIMEN FERPECTO is a Spanish film by Alex de La Iglesa that mixes the black comedy with the crime-thriller genre.It's about a man that always got what he wanted, especially about women (someone like a "Casanova") and had no scruples to get it.
LOURDES (played by Monica Cervera) is completely bizarre and paranoid herself, making RAFAEL (Guillermo Toledo), the main character, look like a victim that he's definitely not!
Mentioning a very famous quote: in this movie "no one is innocent" So, the film is not "ferpect", I mean perfect, but it's very good, and funny, in an effective way!.
Writer/Director Álex de la Iglesia took a simple premise and made a film that never lags in the laugh department.
Although he has done well with fantasy in the past, comedy is definitely his forte.Guillermo Toledo (The Galindez File) and Mónica Cervera were hilarious as a lothario who accidentally kills his rival for manager, and the wallflower who knows his secret and helps him cover it up, only to get rid of all the competition and blackmail him into marriage.Iglesia's fantasy past comes into play with the victim haunting Toledo, sometimes headless, but always with a big knife in his skull..
At other times (particularly when she gets a successful career of her own) she seems only to want to punish Rafael for ignoring her.I am having my own private Spanish film festival at the moment and it occurs to me that "machismo" is not a Spanish word for nothing.
Or maybe it would just not have been Spanish (I can't help thinking of *Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown* when I think of Lourdes unwisely falling for Rafael).Three things I liked about this film: 1.
This is what I call a "disaster" comedy -- kind of like "Meet the Parents" or that HBO show "Curb Your Enthusiasm", where the humor comes from watching the main character squirm through a series of excruciatingly terrible situations, where everything he does seems just makes things even worse.
I laughed out loud a lot as the hero, a suave ladies man and top salesman in a big-city department store, finds his world turned upside down after the big promotion fizzles out and he finds himself pursued by the ugliest girl in town.This is a fast-paced, non-intellectual, crowd-pleasing kind of flick and though it's in Spanish, the humor is broad and I think American audiences will like it, if they get to see it, in spite of the subtitles..
Alex de la Iglesia is one of the most daring Spanish directors working today.
In a way, this film shows a lot of control, something his previous work didn't have.The result is one of the funniest movies that came from Spain recently.
Never mind that in order to attain one's goal involves murdering your enemy.Rafael, a personable salesman at Yeyo's department store, has a rivalry going with Don Antonio, who is also assigned to the same floor.
When he does, little does he know what a genius Leonor turns out to be on her own.The best thing in the film are Guillermo Toledo and Monica Cervera.
While others have purported that Rafa is seeking a perfect life, the much more accurate description of his character is one that is seeking overindulgence in the material (and carnal) luxuries that can be found within the store he works in, Yeyo's.
The true comedy of this movie is how Rafa must continually splinter and sacrifice his love of the grandiose to constantly appease his tormentor, Lourdes.
This film is about the tragedy of an elegant man, Rafael, played by Guillermo Toledo.
However in bringing forth Lourdes as a psycho in her own right -- think Alex Forrest, but likable -- who functions as the one who brings Rafael down to Earth while coming into her own, he turns EL CRIMEN FERPECTO into a tale of crazy feminism that sides with those who are ignored by today's beauty obsessed society.
I'm not a complete fan of Alex de la Iglesia's movies - he's technically proficient, but the things that tend to interest him (old style cinephilia, terror films of the 70s, pop culture in general) are far from mine.
The movie stars Rafael, who works as the head salesman in the ladies section of a large department store in Madrid (it is subtly touching that Rafael believes his position in society is far more important than it really is).
But there is one witness, Lourdes, the ugliest worker in the department store (and I mean, really ugly), who is in love with Rafael.
Its a susbstanially funny movie and satire attacking one aspect of the "average Joe" Raphael (played by Guillermo Toledo) feels he is living the perfect life: working in an upscale department store as a handsome, well-dressed man, who haves sex with all the hot female employees (using the bed sets and the dressing rooms) while most of the other employees respect him.
In a fit of rage, he accidentally kills him and the crime is witnessed by an mousy, unattractive sales clerk Lourdes (Monica Cervera).
Home life, marriage and children gets attacked too as one of the funniest moments of the movie comes where he pays Lourdes's family a visit.
Its a bit too long for a movie of this type, and as such, the comedy runs dry as it becomes more of a detective/character study flick, which it isn't really good at.
Everything seems to be perfect, but Lourdes, an ugly and obsessive saleswoman has seen it and starts blackmailing Rafael in order to become his wife.
After doing so good films as "la comunidad" or "el dia de la bestia" I expected something more from Alex de la Iglesia.
The result is not as good as expected, the film is not bad, but it could be better, manly because of the stupidness of the characters, it is clear that we are inside one of the De la Iglesia's grotesques universes, but the story is too absurd, and actors are not reliable.
It is funny, but this dark comedy is not as good as I think an Alex de la Iglesia's film should be, I expected something better..
it was brilliant to see the combination of humor and extraordinary story - the final catharsis and the way the main characters end the movie is sublime!other than that, the humor, although not really my type, what really very, very good.
it'd been a long time since i'd laughed so much with a movie!there was a scene in which a mechanic is at work and a TV crew comes, for this "marriage program" - and the bride is waiting outside.i didn't get to see the bride very well, but she seemed to be extraordinarily beautiful...