O Crime do Padre Amaro

Very cool! Finally a good Portuguese movie with "salt" and "rythm" in it! Very young adult film. Oh, and the priest is so "ugly".....or not!!!! Just remember this is a contemporaneous adaptation of a 19th century Portuguese romance. it's not just a script made for a "cool gangs-sex" movie... We may compare it to "Tentação" (1997) with Joaquim De Almeida, but it has an all new taste (visual and musical) to the movie, definitely a 21th century film. There's also a little bit of comedy involved, not "cheesy" but ironic. I would also say a strong language is involved in this movie, so strong that identifies with current issues of our society. My opinion... see it for yourself!!! It's worth it!!!

As you might not know Eça de Queiroz is one of Portugal's most rightfully celebrated writers. He was witty, he spared no one in his critics and must now be rolling in his tomb. And that's not due to this movie being bad, which it is, but as a result of the treatment dispensed to one of his masterworks "O Crime do Padre Amaro". It's treated like cheap, throwaway trash.

When it was publicized that this was to be a "modern and urban" take on the book I feared for the worst, normally modern in these contexts means taking the liberty to take the p**** when doing an adaptation, to half arse it in the shoddiest possible way. And so the moral and social dilemma of a priest having a secret,forbidden affair are substituted by extra-long passages of people dealing drugs and singing hip-hop for no particular or pertinent reason to the plot. It's just there like it might very well not have been.

Oh and there's lots of sex so you can at least be counting on that when you put this on. Remember how every movie in the 80's, no matter the genre or the tone always found a way to sneak in some nudity? If it was a thriller and they had no need for it they simply found a way that when they were capturing a felon he "happened" to be in bed with a woman that would prance around screaming (naked of course) when the cops barged in. Ahem, gratuitous is the word I think. Not that there's anything wrong with nude scenes but here they make the creators of this movie look desperate simply because there's nothing else to the movie, it's totally devoid of what do you call it dramatic content.

This film is a clear example of what makes contemporary Portuguese cinema absolutely disgusting. Moved by sentiments that are certainly anticlerical and atheistic, Carlos Coelho da Silva decided to bring to the cinema one of the most controversial and famous novels by Eça de Queirós, who was not sympathetic to the Catholic Church, but who gifted us with a writing of truly unparalleled beauty. Let me clarify this: the problem with this film is not to be against priests, but to completely distort Queirós work. It's a film without context, just a pretext for sizzling erotic scenes, worthy of a pornographic film, that turn a priest into a kind of "confessional sexual athlete". Why? Because sex sells. Just that.

The action of the film completely contradicts the book, so we can say that any similarity is almost coincidental. With the exception of the title and most of the characters, the film does not take advantage of the excellent material of Queirós, preferring to invent a new story in our time, where sex scenes fit better. The most reputable actors are there, but always in supporting roles (Nicolau Breyner, Ana Bustorff, Nuno Melo, José Wallenstein, Diogo Morgado, etc.), leaving the main characters for two weaker colleagues. Jorge Corrula has an angelic aspect in the cloth and Soraia Chaves may not have any talent but she looks great naked, and this was widely used in the film.

Needless to say, in an ignorant country like my dear Portugal, such a film was a huge blockbuster. Sex sells... sex involving priests sells even more. Did people read the book to compare, and did they also like good Queiros literature? I doubt that much. A pair of breasts are more appealing than a six-hundred-page book. A national shame.

I've seen it and my expectations about this movie we're confirmed. If not the best, "O Crime do Padre Amaro" was one of my favorite movies ever. This movie is an adaptation of the Eça de Queiros book to our days despite the changes that had to be made. Great performances from all the well know actors, lots of beauties, and an entertaining polemical issue (organized crime, street gangs, fake religion and priests sexual needs) that affects our society are the ingredients to this successful movie.

Carlos Coelho da Silva could do much better than he did. As other users said the time was not well distributed, not only because there were details to explain, but also because the naked scenes took to much. The movie had much more potential...

I was not expecting such a tragic ending, but the fact is that with this end the message carried causes a bigger impact and is easily learned.

The script is extremely poor, the acting is lamentable, the soundtrack is annoying. This film is an incredibly poor adaptation of Eca's book, which unsuccessfully tries to transpose it to the 21st century. It simply doesn't work - not because it is not possible to adapt Eca's classic to a modern environment, but simply because nothing in the film works: the twists are predictable, it heavily relies on conventionally-beautiful naked body and simulated sex and on clichés (such as the gay characters, the gangsters). The plots and characters are disjointed. It tries to portray a multicultural modern Portugal, but the attempt is also flawed, leaving the viewer lost.