O Crime do Padre Amaro
O Crime do Padre Amaro ("The Crime of Father Amaro"), subtitled 'Scenes of Religious Life', is a novel by the 19th-century Portuguese writer José Maria de Eça de Queiroz. It was first published in 1875 to great controversy. Background. Eça finished the first draft of this novel in 1875. He sent it to some friends who ran a literary magazine, with the request that they return the proofs so he could edit them. However, they began to serialise the story without allowing him to see the proofs. He subsequently revised the novel and submitted  it to a publisher in 1876 but it was barely noticed by the public. Eça then wrote "Cousin Bazilio", returning to "The Crime of Father Amaro" only after the publication of "Cousin Bazilio" in 1878. The third version involved an extensive rewrite and was described by Eça as "an entirely new novel". Plot summary. The novel concerns a young priest, Amaro, who serves as diocesan administrator at Leiria. Amaro lacks a vocation, having been pushed into the priesthood by his aristocratic patrons, the Marquesa de Alegros and, later, the Conde de Ribamar, and, owing to the vow of chastity he  was obliged to take, is obsessed with women and deeply sexually frustrated. Upon arriving in Leiria, he falls for Amélia, the beautiful daughter of his landlady, a pious widow and the mistress of his superior, Canon Dias. After Amélia's fiancé, João Eduardo, publishes an exposé of the local clergy's venal habits in the town's newspaper under a pseudonym, Amaro and his colleagues and parishioners expose João Eduardo as the author of the piece, pressure Amélia to break off the engagement, and drive João Eduardo out of town. Amaro begins a sexual relationship with Amélia, meeting first in  his coal cellar and then in the bell-ringer's house, using charitable visits to his bedridden, mentally disabled daughter as a cover. His love affair with Amélia ends in tragedy when she becomes pregnant and is forced to seclude herself in the countryside for the duration of the pregnancy in order to prevent a scandal. João Eduardo returns to Leiria, and there is talk of convincing him to marry Amélia and hence make the child legitimate, but this does not come to pass. Amaro and his maid, Dionisia, who also acts as a midwife, find a wet-nurse who , it is implied, kills babies in her care. Amélia gives birth to a healthy boy, who is handed over to the wet-nurse by Amaro and killed. Amélia suffers complications after the birth and dies of a burst aneurysm, or so the doctor tells everyone. She was in good health immediately after the birth, but became hysterical when she was not allowed to see her son. The actual paternity of Amélia's child, while the subject of gossip, never comes to light, and Amaro moves on to another parish. The novel leaves him in Lisbon, discussing the events of the  Paris Commune. Reviews. Writing in the Washington Post, Michael Dirda describes "O Crime do Padre Amaro" as a "terrific novel". Noting that the work is often compared with Emile Zola's "La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret", Dirda argues that "Eça's relentless and unforgiving satire is far more sweeping than Zola's often soft-focused pastoral". He adds that the novel employs every sort of comedy and that Eça is a writer "who understands sex". Film and TV adaptations. In 2002, Carlos Carrera directed a Spanish-language version of "O Crime do Padre Amaro" ("El crimen del padre Amaro") in  Mexico. It starred Gael García Bernal as Father Amaro and was greeted with public outrage in Mexico, where Christian groups called for it to be banned. In 2002, it was one of the Best Foreign Language Film Nominees at the 75th Academy Awards. The film was criticized in Portugal as insufficiently faithful to the novel. It was said that Mexico in 2002 has little or nothing to do with the 19th century context in the novel; in addition, Amaro's motivation is different. In the novel his education steers him into the priesthood, whereas in the film he chooses to  follow this path himself and has some anticlerical views. Finally, Eça's Amélia is older (aged 23) than her film equivalent, although the actress who played the part (Ana Claudia Talancón) turned 22 in the year the film was released. In 2005, Carlos Coelho da Silva directed a movie "O Crime do Padre Amaro" in Portugal. This was a production sponsored by the SIC television channel. Padre Amaro (Jorge Corrula) and Amélia (Soraia Chaves) were the main characters. According to the IMDb, this was (as of January 2006) the most successful Portuguese movie in Portuguese box office history. O Crime