O Crime do Padre Amaro

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.

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.

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 film is nothing else than an exposition of nudity. Has anyone noticed that all three main female characters appear naked? It looks like the only winning bet for Portuguese filmmakers is to include some (if not a lot) of nudity of the local stars, together with slang which otherwise, in the nowadays Portuguese society, is repulsed with horror. If you watch advertising for Portuguese films at Portuguese TVs, they all have included a "hot" scene from the movie. I'm not saying, by any means, that Portuguese society is alienated; just that the movie industry does not seem capable of finding others ways of success. Going back to the movie... There is nothing left from the spirit of the book, which is a masterpiece. The film could have been a good one, had there been emphasized the real idea of the book (of actuality at any time) and not the strictly erotic part. It had almost all the ingredients... but the "chef" was awful...

I saw O Crime do Padre Amaro yesterday, and i all i can say is that the movie is very bad. Much of the characters of the movie are only there to fill up the story. There's no density and the characters change personalities without any explanation. It's true the movie is the biggest office box ever made in Portugal but, as someone already said, this is all because of the good publicity. The Portuguese movie industry has good movies, but this is not one of them. It is important that the Portuguese audience goes to see their own movies and maybe that is the only virtue of "O Crime do Padre Amaro". I've read that there will be a TV series made from this movie. I expect that the deleted scenes will explain better some parts of the story. The soundtrack is nice and representative of the music that is made in Portugal.