PERDITA DURANGO

Somewhere beyond David Lynch's WILD AT HEART lies PERDITA DURANGO, Álex de la Iglesia's spectacularly disreputable take on the American mythology of lovers on the run. Here, romantic devotion is measured in the trail of bodies left behind. Adapted from a novel by Barry Gifford, whose characters also inhabit Lynch's film, this deranged collision of outlaw romance, black comedy, and occult horror ventures into territory few filmmakers would dare approach. Even at its most appalling, the film maintains an exuberance that makes it difficult to know whether to laugh or recoil.

Rosie Perez plays Perdita, a ferocious outlaw who finds her soulmate in Romeo Dolorosa (Javier Bardem), a grinning criminal and self-styled sorcerer with a taste for human sacrifice. Together they embark on a cross-border crime spree involving two kidnapped American teenagers and a series of grotesque rituals. Perez and Bardem are sensational together, bringing an almost indecent amount of sexual energy to their shared appetite for destruction. Their performances give the film its reckless momentum, while the collision of Mexican folk religion and American pop culture lends the proceedings a particularly bizarre flavor. Long butchered for American distribution, PERDITA DURANGO also features James Gandolfini as a federal agent investigating the smuggling of a truckload of human fetuses, a detail that should give you some idea of what you're getting into.