DON'T TEMPT ME (Sin noticias de Dios)
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten Grade: C- First Look Pictures Directed by: Agustin Diaz Yanes Written by: Agustin Diaz Yanes Cast: Victoria Abril, Penelope Cruz, Demian Bichir, Fanny Ardant, Gael Garcia Bernal Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 7/10/03
While a film about the sometimes amiable, sometimes tense relationship of angels to people might recall Ernst Lubitsch's 1943 gem "Heaven Can Wait" (about a man who believes he's lived a life of sin, recalls his past and requests admission to Hell), on one level Agustin Diaz Yanes's "Don't Tempt Me" (Sin noticias de Dios in the original Spanish) looks to Garson Kanin's "The Great Man Votes." In that 1939 pic a drunk fighting for custody of his children is elevated to new stature when election- time roles around, the contest to be decided by his one vote.
In this case, a near-bankrupt Heaven, presumably having discovered that only lawyers had recently died, needs to find just one good person to keep the balance of power with Hell. Notwithstanding the condition of the world today, this should not be too difficult, so one wonder why Marina D'Angelo (Fanny Ardant), who is operations manager of Heaven, sends agent Carmen Ramos (Penelope Cruz) to Earth to save the soul of a dissolute, washed-up boxer named Manny (Demian Bichir).
Diaz Yanes, perhaps knowing that he has a story with not a hell of a lot of comic touches and with dry, satirical humor that wouldn't threaten any institution or challenge Bill Maher in the wit department, relies on a performance by Penelope Cruz as a tough broad, who, we discover, had once been a male gangster. She was given the ultimate punishment she was changed into a woman. While such might be a disaster for Osama Bin Laden and could have evoked considerable laughter therein, this little bit of subtle humor is about the best we get from the film. It's not much, but then "Don't Tempt Me" is not only a trifle, but an incoherent piece of cotton candy the last cone sold at the carnival at that.
In what passes for a twist, Davenport (Gael Garcia Bernal), Marina D'Angelo's counterpart down under as Hell's operations manager, is threatened with a coup and the loss of his job. This forces Davenport, a supposedly evil one who speaks principally English as though his part were written by a Frenchman who objects to words like "hot dog," to change sides in the struggle for Manny's soul and to root for Heaven to win the pugilist over. How would that save his job? Who knows? Should anyone care?
Manny the prizefighter, whose life on Earth is going to end imminently, is not a good guy. Punchy and brain-damanged for being hit on the head too often, he was disowned by his mother for stealing money that she was saving to send his brother to school. He beats women and he owes some hoodlums $25,000, which good angel Lola Nevado (Victoria Abril), now taking the role of his wife, is determined to get.
Diaz Yanes may be trying to make a "Pulp Fiction" for an art- house crowd, perhaps one that is not too demanding, but in casting Heaven in black-and-white as a Parisian nightclub from the 1930's which enjoys the occasional singing of Lola, contrasting the civilized audience there with the roughhouse crowd downunder, he does display some originality. Still, given the withholding of some of the characters' motivations until well into the picture and unsuccessful attempts of the writer-director to reach for political satire (getting into Heaven requires the pulling of strings), "Don't Tempt Me" is likely to pass through the American theaters sin noticias.
Not Rated. 112 minutes. (c) 2003 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
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