Spanish Film Festival (2) - Barrie Pattison appreciates some quality in CRIME WAVE (Gracia Querejeta)

Ola de crímenes/Crime Wave pushes the Spanish Film Festival nicely into high gear. All our favourite Hispanic players in a Santiago Segura produced comedy, this one could hardly go wrong.

We kick off with a battered Maribel Verdú in Padre Javier Cámara’s confessional. He’s amazed to have a taker these days and really more interested in his dodgy Internet connection. Cámara is about to have a rough session.

Luis Tosar was clearing his possession’s out of the closet in ex-wife Maribel’s nice Bilbao suburban home (we’re going to see that shotgun again) and berating his teenage son Asier Rikarte when things suddenly went pear shaped and Luis was lying in a pool of his own blood with Maribel going into high gear to shift the blame.

Rapidly involved are current wife Paula Echevarría and her equally conniving lawyer Juana Acosta, the son’s schoolmate Miguel Bernardeau who has a thing for Maribel, innocent taxi driver with acting aspirations Raúl Arévalo (Marshland), Maribel’s wheel chair bound mother Teresa Lozano and her immigrant carer Montse Pla who find themselves confronting the great Antonio Resines as a stone faced cop who sees through the elaborate lies everyone is concocting. 

One of the things that makes this one stand out is the fact that in all the farcical happenings Resines’ plot is played straight to a serious outcome.    

It’s time to hide the body and look for Tosar’s incriminating cellphone as the cops close in and Maribel becomes involved with lustful Bernardeau, once in front of  his aggro mum clambering over the front fence. It’s interesting to spot these boy romances occurring regularly in Spanish film - de Iglesia’s 800 balas and La comunidad among them. They aren’t game to field them as a girl and older male.

This is a comedy of outrage (too much for father Camara who dashes out of the Confessional to evade the one woman crime wave Maribel). The most corrupt individual does best and the diciest relationship prospers and wins the audience’s approval.

Film making is impeccable, polished even by the high standards of the Spanish popular film. It is superior to director Gracia Querejeta’s Felices 140,which also featured Verdú, and is constructed partly as a vehicle for her fabulous talents. 

Maribel is winning and sexy without any attempt to soften the character’s increasingly monstrous schemes. The women in the film are gorgeous but she dominates them while allowing herself to be made grotesque. Looking over Verdú’s thirty years of credits which include El Potero, Y Tu Mamá También, Pan’s Labyrinth and Blancanieves, is both impressive and frustrating when we realise how much of her work has never been available to us.

Well at least we have a chance to enjoy this one.