Saw El Crimen del Padre Amaro. It was the tale of a young priest who arrives in a semi-remote village which is coincidentally a hotbed of barely concealed vice and corruption. He makes eyes at a hot girl (her hotness is firmly established in a scene where she stolidly ignores the wolf-whistles of every man on a construction site and then blushes with pleasure when this is pointed out. This doesn't mesh well with my understanding of women, but whatever. I guess.) Anyway, she later confesses (in his confessional) to the sin of teenage horniness. But, oh no! She wants to be a nun. You can imagine where this is going. It plays out pretty much exactly as you'd imagine. There are some surprises, but nothing major.
Meanwhile, the older priest he's supposed to be shadowing is in semi-cahoots with the local drug-lords. They donate money to his hospice projects and he turns a blind eye to their source of income (this is apparently how cartels launder money, btw. I didn't know this.) Another priest in a yet more remote village seems to be the most moral person in the film and he's harboring vigilantes and guerrillas who are fighting back against the cartels, so not even he is completely antiseptic, ethics-wise.
The film ends in inevitable tragedy, but it is fun in parts getting there. The film has a bad habit of laying things on a bit thick: there is a woman who I guess is a witch. She's seen stealing from the donation plate, feeding a consecrated host to a black cat, and living in a sort of cave made of Creepy Dolls. Also, while establishing this village as a place where morals go to die, the film has the young priest meet a retarded woman who at first kisses his hand and then places it on her breast. A bit sordid, but novel and strange. I'm mostly a hedonist when it comes to film, so these scenes stick out for me. The rest of the film is a sort of pedestrian sad drama. Not bad at all, mind you, just not remarkable.
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