Perdita Durango (1997)

Perdita Durango is crossing the US-Mexican border after scattering her sister's ashes when she meets charismatic Romeo, fresh from a bank robbery, and he invites her back to his ranch where they enter into a physical relationship. Romeo turns out to be a practitioner of Santeria, a shamanistic Mexican religion. After watching a ceremony in which Romeo dismembers a corpse and spits its blood over the crowd, Perdita suggests that it would be cooler if next time they killed someone as part of the ritual... and maybe ate them.

PERDITA DURANGO was Alex de la Iglesia's first film in the English language (mostly) and it raises both the budget and the stakes from his previous films Acción Mutante and El Dia De La Bestia. There are some obvious similarities to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, though it is actually based on the series of novels that produced David Lynch's WILD AT HEART, with elements of a real life Mexican murder cult mixed in.

Romeo and Perdita are gloriously over the top characters, deviant and amoral, but they turn out to have a surprising amount of depth. Javier Bardem's performance is amongst the most memorable of the 90's - Romeo is larger than life and can be truly terrifying, but is also deeply charismatic and sometimes vulnerable. Rosie Perez also brings out the multiple facets of Perdita well.

Their two kidnap victims start out as comical parodies of naïve all-American brats, but grow into something more nuanced as they interact with their captors. Harley Cross and Aimee Graham initially present as one dimensional pastiches but in time turn their characters into people. Screamin' Jay Hawkins is just delightfully WTF in his role. There's a real mix of characters in the film and they're all a pleasure to meet.

Alex de la Iglesia uses shifting tones and moods to keep the viewer on their toes, never quite sure whether any given scene is going to be twisted and vicious, darkly hilarious or some combination of both. The film frequently subverts expectations but is reliably transgressive - though more so in some cuts than others, as it has rarely been released without some cuts being made (Senses of Cinema has a comparison of different versions).

The film's weakest moments are probably when it shifts into action, which is not where de la Iglesia is at his strongest, but it doesn't happen often enough for it to really detract from the film.

Perdita Durango is a delicious black comedy, ripe with gleeful perversion and cleverly constructed - it's even quite philosophical. I cannot understand why it has so many negative reviews, but I presume it has something to do with the fact that many reviewers will only have seen a butchered cut of the movie.

See it uncut-ish and love it!