Theatrical release: August 19, 2005 (NY/LA) Spanish iconoclast Alex de Iglesia continues to toy with genre conventions in this black comedy, offering up his characteristic social commentary in a skewering of consumerist culture and the superficial values it perpetuates. Having... [More]

Theatrical release: August 19, 2005 (NY/LA) Spanish iconoclast Alex de Iglesia continues to toy with genre conventions in this black comedy, offering up his characteristic social commentary in a skewering of consumerist culture and the superficial values it perpetuates. Having garnered an international cult following with such films as Spanish spaghetti Western 800 BULLETS, and PERDITA DURANGO, starring Rosie Perez and Javier Bardem and based on the same novel as David Lynch's WILD AT HEART, the director again delivers a picture that will disturb even as it delights. Rafael (Guillermo Toledo) is at the top of the heap at Yeyo's, the department store whose ladies department is his own small kingdom. A hit with customers and coworkers alike, the suave Rafael is able to sell anything to anyone, and seems a shoe-in for store manager. But things don't go exactly as planned, and Rafael is beaten out by rival Don Antonio (Luis Varela) in menswear. When Don Antonio mysteriously disappears, Rafael is the most likely suspect, and one person knows the secret that could bring him down. That person is Lourdes, a coworker who has loved Rafael from afar for years, and the one woman he has not bedded due to her less-than-stunning physical attributes. Forced to submit to her will, Rafael is subjected to a litany of affronts to his womanizing, egocentric sensibilities, including Lourdes's rapacious sexual appetites, a coerced meeting with Lourdes's eccentric family (one of the film's most hilarious sequences), and ultimately a very public wedding. Rafael's mental stability begins to deteriorate as he conjures various ways of offing his new bride, but the outcome is one that no one could ever have predicted. Ultimately sympathetic to both Lourdes and Rafael, mere products of capitalism's pervasive ideology, the film maintains its madcap buoyancy throughout, allowing it to maintain its hilarity along with its prescience. [Less]