Crimen ferpecto (Spain/Italy, Ferpect Crime, 2004)

In my quest to go to the cinema a lot while in Hungary and see European and/or independent movies I sometimes make mistakes. This romantic comedy was one of them. The Don Juanesque middle manager of a department store kills by accident the rival middle manager who gets promoted instead of him. His witness a supposedly ugly female salesperson blackmails him into marrying her. It was fast paced, but unfunny. Almost all the jokes were played upon the fact that she looks unattractive to the womanizer who is used to have flamboyant and easy relationships with model-looking women. The reason I couldn’t stand the movie is precisely this, it was too much playing up to the stereotypes. Yes, she gets her revenge and money and fame at the end, and he is humiliated in every possible way. But the real winners of the movie are again those who look fabulous, thus it strengthens the stereotype it supposedly attacks in a humorous way. When you are hammered every day with judgments based on your look (or worse for the same reason not even acknowledging that you exist) a movie like this does not even wish to give false or true hope. The end is so unrealistic that we all know it’s a joke: the ugly will never get ahead.

1. IMDB