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Don't Tempt Me review
:. Director: Agustin Diaz Yanes
:. Starring: Victoria Abril, Penélope Cruz
:. Running Time: 1:35
:. Year: 2003
:. Country: Spain
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Paradise and, especially, hell have never appeared so welcoming, battling for our poor souls through their respective envoys, a couple of angels whose terrestrial wrapping resembles Victoria Abril and Penélope Cruz. In this esoteric comedy by Spanish director Agustin Diaz Yanes, hell resembles a cold and materialistic company, molded on the model of "Corporate America" while paradise is a capital of culture looking like the city of Paris. Built discreetly on this opposition between capitalist America and cultural Europe, this fight between good and evil turns to a war of the sexes with social inequality in the background.
A vulgar boxer on the razor's edge, Many 's (Demian Bichir) soul is at stake, so the head of paradise (Fanny Ardant) sends her best agent, the sweet Lola (Abril) to earth; she takes on the traits of Many's wife in order to put him back on the right path. Having decided to thwart these divine plans, the CEO of hell (Gael García Bernal—Y Tu Mamá También, Amores Perros) calls upon his favorite damned soul, the sulfurous Carmen (Cruz) who enters the boxer's life as a cousin.
Composed like an amusing fable, the film multiplies the socio-cultural themes while the war between Lola and Carmen rages on moral ground—Many, a pathetic human being, is offered a last breath of humanity—and social ground—the supermarket where Lola is a model employee and Carmen is the cynical head of personnel. Corruption, domestic violence, lesbianism and trade union demands are tackled before all is settled in a burst of colored violence in the great tradition of Tarantino but especially like Thelma & Louise, the women finally taking their revenge on a quite chauvinist Mediterranean society.
Don't Tempt Me is above all a work about the inequalities of the world: social, sexual, cultural and political which are propagated in heaven, a too realistic reflection of our universe; and maybe that's the true hell. The approach is ironic and reveals to us that in any event the dice are loaded beforehand, whatever side you're on. The borders between good and evil are even more clouded as the "capitalist" CEO of hell and the guarantor of the paradise "culture" must unite in order to assure their respective survival, just like art cannot exist without the financial support of more materialist structures.
The picture is equipped with this soft madness which fits so well with Spanish cinema. The humor is distinct, favoring a second degree rather than direct exploitation of the situation like Beetlejuice. The abundance of topics broached, however, does not make it possible to fully exploit the Cruz/Abril duality, as only Cruz's character has enough depth to offer a juicy interpretation while Abril is forced to remain in a too passive half-tone. The film lacks punch, exhausting itself around Many's character caught in inept scheming whereas the functioning of the modern adaptation of paradise and hell would have gained by being further explored.
While the satire is altogether not very incisive, the film absolves certain script weaknesses in its originality, celebrating its proud Italian-Spanish Mediterranean heritage by offering a welcome alternative to contemporary cinema that's too often a bit too down-to-earth.
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: from 1998 to 2011
Movie Reviews since 2012
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