Perdita Durango
Spain/Mexico/USA 1997
Reviewed by José Arroyo
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Perdita Durango is a prostitute whose sister and nephews were brutally murdered by her brother-in-law before he killed himself. Romeo Dolorosa is a drug dealer and witch doctor who has just conned his partner Shorty out of his share of a bank robbery. Perdita and Romeo meet at the Mexican-American border and become lovers and partners-in-crime. At his cousin Reggie's urging, Romeo agrees to deliver a cargo of foetuses to Las Vegas for gangland boss Marcello Santos. On a whim, Perdita and Romeo kidnap Duane and Estelle, a young Wasp couple. Romeo rapes Estelle while Perdita has sex with the more willing Duane. Estelle is chosen to be the human sacrifice at one of Romeo's occult ceremonies. However, her life is spared when Shorty and a gang of armed thugs interrupt the event. Romeo kills Shorty but in the process Romeo's magic protective necklaces are removed.
The whole gang escape and go to take delivery of the foetuses. On the way, Romeo settles a debt with a nightclub owner who has been strong-arming his grandmother. Before Romeo kills him, he discovers his cousin Reggie will double-cross him. When Romeo and the rest arrive to take possession of the foetuses, they are ambushed by cops but escape. Romeo leaves Perdita, Duane and Estelle with a friend while he goes to deliver the cargo to his cousin. Estelle tells Perdita that it's a double-cross. Perdita frees Duane and Estelle and chases after Romeo. After confronting his cousin Reggie, Romeo turns his back on him and lets himself be shot. Perdita arrives and kills Reggie. While the cops try to figure out what's happened, Perdita tearfully wanders through Las Vegas.
Review
Perdita Durango is being marketed as a sequel to Wild at Heart, a claim neither exact nor wise. It is true that both films are based on books by Barry Gifford, and more or less share a geographical setting and a rather gothic take on socio-sexual relations. It is also true that some of the less central characters in Wild at Heart reappear in the new film. The relatively minor character of the double-crossing whore played by Isabella Rossellini in Wild, for instance, has been turned into a starring role for Rosie Perez here. Yet none of this quite adds up to a sequel. Calling it such is unfortunate since Perdita Durango doesn't measure up to Lynch's film: Perdita's cheapjack brutalism makes one nostalgic for Wild at Heart's formal elegance, striking imagery, romantic eroticism and compellingly unsettling violence.
Perdita seems misjudged on various levels. The narrative, for instance, is riddled with flashbacks. This doesn't make the story difficult to follow, but the reliance on this narrative device is often irritating both because the flashbacks are used unnecessarily (the bank robbery could have been structured chronologically) and because some of the past events are uninteresting (Romeo as a soldier reading during a battle). All these flashbacks and dream-sequences do is chop up the narrative, adding up to less than the sum of their parts.
Just as damaging is the casting of Rosie Perez as Perdita Durango. The film includes enough references to Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner to indicate that Perdita and Romeo are meant to be somewhat like them: Romeo (played by Javier Bardem) identifies so strongly with the charming rogue Burt Lancaster played in Vera Cruz (1954) that the scene where he dies morphs into the end of Vera Cruz. Bardem as Burt is easier to swallow than Perez as Gardner. Perdita's dream of being eaten by a leopard is intended to indicate her longing for her ideal complementary opposite. If Romeo is meant to be half-jaguar, she is leopard-like: a feline beauty; mysterious, powerful, graceful and deadly, like, say, Gardner's Kitty in The Killers (1946, which co-starred Lancaster). But while Perez has a particular gift for comedy and can be wonderful in the right roles (as in White Men Can't Jump), she's more alley than jungle cat and no Ava Gardner. The only mystery is why Romeo puts up with her pushy screeching throughout the film.
Álex de la Iglesia is a specialist in the brutal black humour Perdita Durango aims for. His debut Acción mutante was an attempt at live-action manga film as it pushed graphic representations of sex and violence to the point of comic disbelief, managing to be shocking and funny. Perhaps because Acción mutante seemed to think its every infraction of good taste was hilarious, it gained a fervent following among adolescent boys. The Day of the Beast is much more successful. The story of a priest who turns to the devil in order to prevent the coming of the anti-Christ, it's a biting satire on religion, the cult of the occult, tabloid television and contemporary Spanish society - all things de la Iglesia understands.
The problem with Perdita Durango is that nobody in this Spanish-Mexican production knows enough about the American culture (as embodied in the characters of Duane and Estelle) the film is meant to be ridiculing to tease out the subtleties and nuances that would transform mere crudity into social satire, shock and laughter. Even if Álex de la Iglesia is one of the most interesting young directors working today, Perdita Durango is not the film that will convince anyone of this fact.
Credits
- Producer
- Andrés Vicente Gómez
- Screenplay
- Barry Gifford
- Jorge GuerricaechevarrÍa
- David Trueba
- Álex de la Iglesia
- Based on the book "59° and Raining The Story of Perdita Durango" by
- Barry Gifford
- Director of Photography
- Flavio Mtnz. Labiano
- Editor
- Teresa Font
- Production Designers
- Baffra
- José Luis Arrizabálaga
- Music
- Simon Boswell
- ©Sogetel S.A./Lolafilms S.A./Mirador S.A. de C.V.
- Production Companies
- An Andrés Vicente Gómez production for Sogetel/Lolafilms/ Mirador S.A. de C.V. in association with Canal + (Spain)/Sogepaq S.A./IMCINE (Mexico)
- A Sogetel S.A./Lolafilms S.A./Mirador S.A. de C.V./Occidental Media Corp co-production
- Executive Producers
- Fernando Bovaira
- Miguel Necoechea
- Pablo Barbachano
- Max Rosenberg
- Production Associate/Supervisor
- Marco Gómez
- Production Co-ordinators
- Lilí González
- Donna Nitti
- International Co-ordinator
- Douglas Wilson
- Production Manager
- José Luis Escolar
- Unit Production Managers
- Sandra Solares
- Anne McCaffrey
- Location Managers
- Laura Alemán
- Tod Swindell
- Las Vegas:
- Maggie Mancuso
- Assistant Directors
- José Luis Escolar
- Charlie Lázaro
- Adrian Grunberg
- Nela Fernández
- Mark Brooks
- Script Supervisors
- Beatriz Anda
- Liz Graham
- Las Vegas:
- Rhonda Hyde
- Casting
- US:
- Joy Dickson
- Nicole Arbusto
- Mexico:
- Claudia Becker
- Camera/Steadicam Operator
- Carlos Cabecerán
- Special Visual Effects
- L2 Entertainment
- Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Jim Wheelock
- Visual Effects Producer:
- Jini Dayaneni
- Visual Effects Co-ordinator:
- Shannon Preece
- Digital Supervisor:
- Tim Sassoon
- Digital Artists:
- April Walker
- Anthony Longman
- Film Scanning/Recording
- EFilm
- Special Effects
- Supervisor:
- Dan Lester
- Foreman:
- Jerry King
- Technicians:
- Marcelino Pacheco Guzmán
- Marcelino Pacheco García
- Joe Self
- Ron Grunden
- Jack Burns
- Graphic Design
- Oscar Mariné
- Art Directors
- Ana Solares
- Salvador Parra
- Andrew Bernard
- Set Decorators
- Claudio Contreras 'Pache'
- Helen Britten
- Costume Designers
- María Estela Fernández
- Glenn Ralston
- Wardrobe Supervisors
- Jaime Ortíz
- Mark West-Wright
- Wardrobe Co-ordinator
- Ruth Zermeño
- Make-up Supervision
- José Quetglas
- Mercedes Guillot
- Hair Stylist
- Josefina Mendoza
- 'Perdita Durango' Titles
- Juan Tomicic
- Daiquiri Digital Features
- Optical Effects
- Story Film/Pablo Nuñez
- Percussion Solos
- Chucho Merchán
- Orchestrations/Music Director
- Terry Davies
- Recording/Mixing Engineer
- Geoff Foster
- Soundtrack
- "Love Is All Around" by Sonny Curtis; "La jaula de oro" by Enrique Franco, performed by Los Tigres del Norte; "De Sinaloa a California" by Julio César Preciado, performed by Banda El Recodo de Cruz Lizárraga; "Menuet aus der Flotensonate D-dur BMW 1033" by Johann Sebastian Bach; "Camel Walk", "Soul City" by Richard Miller, performed by Southern Culture On the Skids; "Spanish Flea" by Julius Wechter, performed by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass; "El cartel de a kilo", "El puño de polvo" by Mario Quintero Lara, performed by Los Tucanes de Tijuana; "Little Girl" performed by Electric Playboys; "Rumberito" by/performed by La Gloria de Roberto Contreras; "Pazzo Kids" by R. Rhodes; "I Walk the Line" by/performed by Johnny Cash; "Vera Cruz" by Hugo Friedhofer, Sammy Cahn; "Something for Nothing" by Glen Matlock, O'Brien, performed by Glen Matlock; "I'm Lonely"
- Direct Sound
- Salvador de la Fuente
- Juan Carlos Prieto
- Mixers
- Ray Gillon
- Manuel Cora
- Dialogue Recordist
- Mario López
- Sound Editor
- Santiago Thévenet
- Sound Effects
- Jorge Rodríguez Inclán
- Sound Effects Recordist
- Jorge Lerner
- Sound Special Effects
- London:
- Olivier Tarney
- G. Minor
- Sound Library
- Pilar de la Vega
- José Miguel Martinez
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Julian Bucio
- David Sanders
- Additional Dialogue Supervisor
- Lisa Button
- Animals
- Animals R Us
- Film Extracts
- Urotsukidoji II/Legend of the Demon Womb
(1991)- Vera Cruz
(1954)- Cast
- Rosie Perez
- Perdita Durango
- Javier Bardem
- Romeo Dolorosa
- Harley Cross
- Duane
- Aimee Graham
- Estelle
- Screamin' Jay Hawkins
- Adolfo
- Don Stroud
- Marcello 'Mad Eyes' Santos
- Demián Bichir
- Catalina
- Santiago Segura
- Shorty Dee
- Carlos Bardem
- Reggie San Pedro
- Alex Cox
- Agent Doyle
- James Gandolfini
- Special Agent Woody Dumas
- Harry Porter
- Sheriff Tyrone 'Rip' Ford
- Carlos Arau
- Philips
- Miguel Galván
- Doug
- Regina Orozco
- Lilly
- Roger Cudney
- Herbert
- Erika Carlson
- Glory Ann
- William G. Stamper
- Charly Park
- Gabriel Berthier
- technician
- Cesar Rodríguez
- Dede Peralta
- David Villalpando
- Skinny
- Forrie Smith
- Armendáriz
- Paco Pharrez
- Nicky 'Bigfoot'
- Wil 'Nahkohe' Strickland
- Provino Momo, 'The Fist'
- Josefina Echanove
- Romeo's grandmother
- Miguel Iglesias
- Danny Mestiza
- Dewey Kellog
- Montana
- Marco Bacuzzi
- Tony
- Abel Woolrich
- old man in cemetery
- James Gooden
- Manny Flynn
- Emily Blanton
- airport waitress
- Maya Zapata
- Vadira Zapata
- Mexican girls
- Andaluz Russel
- Juana
- Salvador Gómez
- Mexican border guard
- Kenny Jacobs
- driver
- Pam Risner
- woman
- Chely Godinez
- Vicky
- Katie Barbieri
- stewardess
- Norman Stone
- Old Man 'Toques'
- Gerardo Zepeda 'Chiquilín'
- 'La Florida' barman
- Lazaro Patterson
- Babalawo priest
- Jessie Faller
- bank teller
- Adelina Sinohui
- beautiful woman
- Roberto López
- 'Susie Street' man
- Paul Dapra
- Craig Vincent
- policemen
- Steve Kennedy
- paramedic
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Metrodome Distribution Ltd
- 11,176 feet
- 124 minutes 11 seconds (53 seconds cut)
- Dolby digital
- In Colour
- Anamorphic