Dos crímenes
Mexico,
1994, 110 min
Shown in 1996
CREDITS
- dir
-
Roberto Sneider
- prod
-
Roberto Sneider
- scr
-
Roberto Sneider
- cam
-
Carlos Marcovich
- editor
-
Oscar Figueroa Jara
- cast
-
Damian Alcazar, José Carlos Ruiz, Pedro Armendáriz, Delores Heredia
- source
-
Cuévano Films
-
COMMENTS
Roberto Sneider in person.
OTHER
The sardonic humor of Mexican writer Jorge Ibargüengoitía is perfectly transposed to the screen in this delightful film, as is the glee with which he exposes provincial hypocrisy and backstabbing relatives. The anti-hero of the story, a handsome Mexico City architect named Marcos, has a few problems: he attracts women and murder charges like honey draws flies. Accused of a crime he did not commit, he leaves Mexico City and heads for the small town of Muérdago, where his scheming cousins are not-so-patiently waiting for rich, old and sick Uncle Ramón to die so they can inherit his money. Crafty Uncle Ramón uses Marcos’s arrival to annoy his conniving relatives and make them believe that there is more than meets the eye in this visit. Evil intentions are in the eye of the beholder, so when the “innocent” Marcos arrives, it isn’t long before everyone suspects him of secretly buttering up the old man for his own nefarious reasons. Marcos stumbles in and out of trouble more like Charlie Chaplin than John Wayne; and he stumbles in and out of bed with equal finesse. Director Roberto Sneider succeeds in finding a tone that evokes chuckles rather than open laughs with a subtle, razor-sharp black comedy that stretches the definition of new Mexican cinema to include a whole new kind of devastating Latin wit.
FACTOID #81
Anjelica Huston was the first recipient of the Piper-Heidsieck Award in 1991. When Huston received the prize from the champagne maker, she joked, “Can I drink it?”
