Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Spanish Master of Filmmaking is On the Scene!, February 19, 2004
DON'T TEMPT ME (or SIN NOTICIAS DE DIOS in the original) is a sparkling, surreal, humorous, and meaty bit of filmmaking of the type that we have come to expect form the Spanish School of Cinema. Augustin Diaz Yanes both wrote and directed this absorbing parable and has cast it with some of the finest talent from around the globe. His use of smart dialogue, choices of cinematic technique, and rapid fire pacing drives this delicious tale along the paths of Bunuel, Almodovar, etc. The plot: the corporate executives (American profiles of course - though played by British actors like Gemma Jones all speaking in English) of Hell have found a strong need to obtain the soul of a living boxer (Demian Bichir) to join them in Hell. The recruiter Jack (in a terrific performance by the extraordinarily gifted Gael Garcia Bernal) agrees to assign worker Carmen (Penelope Cruz, finally in a role that allows her to demonstrate her broad range of acting skills from drama to comedy) to go to earth to finalize this corporate decision. Meanwhile, in Heaven (quite appropriately filmed in black and white in Paris where the one in charge is Marina d'Angelo played with subtle charm by Fanny Ardant and using French as the language) the elected angel to foster the heavenly admission of the boxer is Victoria Abril (more beautiful than ever and pulling off the heavenly role as a chanteuse with aplomb). Cruz and Abril move in with Bichir, become involved in the struggle over his soul as well as attempting to thwart the results of Bichir's chaotic life as a has-been, in debt boxer. The remainder of the tale is a back and forth pitting of heavenly and Hadean forces and their bungling of both sides of the pitch for Bichir's soul. As the film ends, both the dark and light angels become transiently human, and we learn what their next steps in their respective afterlives might be. Appropriately, this 'comedy' has many dramatic sides, as is requisite for a true comedy. But rest assured with a cast of this caliber and the quality of direction of this surrealistic tale you will be thoroughly entertained. It is refreshing to have a movie move in many languages while it parodies the source countries of each language used to tell a story of good vs evil - and all that jazz!
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An effective critique of globalization., December 11, 2005
This has "spoilers," or so I hear. Consider yourself warned.
"Don't Tempt Me" is a film laced with unique commentary on globalization. Underneath its storyline-that of Carmen (Penelope Cruz) and Lola (Victoria Abril), agents from hell and heaven, respectively-of two women battling for the soul of a boxer is a commentary on how abuses of power are evil, how globalization is to be rejected, and the different forms that good and evil can take in the world.
In this film, heaven and hell are pre-war France and Checkpoint Charlie, respectively. Sophisticated, black-and-white France is home to few people, as heaven is having a crisis: no one is making it past the pearly gates into Elysium anymore. Unless heaven gets the soul of the boxer Manny, it will go under. Hell-the area that divides East and West Berlin-is a dirty, sweaty prison where everyone speaks English and eats British food. The brass of hell want to introduce privilege into their world, an idea that irks hell's director, the old-school Jack Davenport (Gael Garcia Bernal). He eventually enlists Carmen, Lola, and the director of heaven, Marina (Fanny Ardant) as part of his rebellion to keep hell from falling into the hands of the committees. To accomplish this, Manny's soul must not go to hell.
The management in hell wants to incorporate privilege. They even ask for air conditioning in their offices, which is counterintuitive to what hell stands for. (Heck, no one is supposed to be comfortable in hell!) Hell as it is right now is a place where one's previous standing on Earth is irrelevant. However, if hell were to allow corrupt privileged people on Earth to retain their positions in hell, it would soon find itself constructing the hierarchies that exist on Earth, which end up oppressing some people and benefiting others. This would mean that hell is adopting transnational corporate values. And hell can't be like Earth; otherwise there'd be no point to its existence.
In heaven there is no single governing power; instead, there is a democratic committee. This serves to show how consolidated power in one place is dangerous. For instance, the film takes an explicit jab at the IMF, especially against its vice-president, as he is led away in hell as a black immigrant, not a powerful white man. The IMF monitors the global financial system, and has used its power and recommendations to ruin some countries, such as Argentina. Thus, the democratic committee in heaven shows how singularly located power is undesirable and can lead to catastrophe. If power is centralized in the privileged in hell, this will lead to catastrophe as well (as globalization has shown).
There is a theme of abuse of power in this film. The cops on Earth who harass Manny exploit their privileged status as protectors of the peace. The management in hell wants to exploit its standing to give itself privilege over others in hell. There is a clear message that equality is to be championed over unnecessary hierarchies.
There are other unique aspects to the film. Its inclusion of multiple languages serves to show the globalized nature of much of the world. Carmen's sexual origins provide insight into how audiences react to blossoming gay relationships between protagonists in a story. Finally, it is interesting to watch the directors of heaven and hell interact. This serves to show how binaries are necessary, how hot cannot exist without cold, etc. Heaven needs hell and vice versa, good needs evil, and vice versa. What is important is not only that those binaries exist, but also that we debate the nature of them, and see if we are capable of detecting evil in its most implicit of forms (in things such as globalization).
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jenseits Gut und Böse, December 19, 2005
Don't Tempt Me represents a commentary on the value of the structure of morality. Essentially, the film revolves around the competition between Heaven and Hell for mortal souls in the beginning but about mid-way through the film we begin to see that the key moral conflict of the modern era is not between good and evil, but between morality and amorality.
The co-operation between the minions of Heaven and Hell to throw the soul of Manny the boxer to heaven is in order to prevent Heaven from shutting down and thus empowering the managerial cabal in Hell to seize power from the general manager of Hell, a traditionalist concerned with the maintenance of Hell as a place of punishment, demonstrates this conflict. This cabal is not evil in the conventional sense, nor is it good. It does not concern itself with these categories at all, and it is this which is truly radical about their movement. They seek not to be good or evil but efficient. They disregard the categories in totality and in so doing seek to dismantle the very framework of good and evil which underlies the concepts and allows them to make sense at all.
This representation of true `evil', if such a term can successfully be applied to them, is implicitly a commentary on the globalization and corporatization which represents such a powerful force in today's world. The film indicts the pursuit of profits as an end in itself free of moral judgement as an existential threat to the very concepts of good and evil, represented as the general managers of Heaven and Hell. The outcome of this, then, would be the elimination of heaven and the breakdown of Hell as a place of penance and atonement and its replacement with a Hell in which the totality is operated for the benefit of the managerial class, which is to say the shareholders of multi-national enterprises. The symbol of this subversion of the mission of the whole into the service of the few is air-conditioning the general offices of Hell.
The depiction of the management of the Supermercado can be seen as playing a similar role on Earth to the Cabal in hell - they care for profits and do whatever maximizes them, without considering or acknowledging the moral dimension which their decisions touch on.
The central conflict is then solved by the affirmation of the role of morality with Manny's ascension to heaven, but such a resolution is incomplete. As the General Manager of Heaven says early in the film, even those reaching heaven these days aren't reaching it of their own merit, and the same can be said of Manny - Hell throws the contest in Heaven's favor, a fixed fight, which seems to indicate that the corporatization of morality as a process is not so easily halted. The incomplete and essentially unsatisfactory temporary solution mirrors the uneasy relationships between multi-nationals and globalization on the one hand and the concept of social justice and corporate morality on the other in our present world and demonstrates the ambiguity of the solution.
I think the film succeeds as a critique as well as an entertaining film and operates on both levels with finesse and skill. The layers work together to inform the viewing of the film and make it more enjoyable.
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