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Julian (Sebastián Aguirre) is
young and still pure in heart, and he wants to become a priest - so his
parents send him to the boarding school of Los Cruzados de Cristo,
to learn to become the perfect servant of the Lord. And he's doing good as
a seminarian, too, good enough to attract the attention of the seminar's
head Father Angel de la Cruz (Juan Manuel Bernal), who makes him his
favourite, soon has him live under his own roof, and win his absolute
trust - so far so that Julian even spies on his fellow seminarians, who,
all in their pre-adolescence to adolescence, only start to discover their
bodily urges without knowing what's right or wrong (in the eyes of the
church). And there are those who are punished thanks to Julian, who though
believes he's in the right enough that he doesn't consider it a wrong
thing to rat on his friends. However, Father Angel is far from a saint
himself, Julian catches him drinking, having sex, even doing drugs - but
he's under the priest's spell, and takes each and every of his lame
excuses for gospel. And the priest knows about the boy's unconditional
obedience, and soon soothes him into doing him sexual favours as well ...
Perfect Obedience
is quite a remarkable film since it sheds a whole different light on
sexual abuse in the Catholic church - and by no means an apologetic one in
the least, even though the film dares to break up the usual
predator/victim dichotomy to take a very sympathetic look into what might
be going on in the mind of the victim who's too young to know better to
make himself an at times willing accomplice, and how does the sexual
predator use the boy's innocence relying on things other than sheer power
- and this is all done in a very subtle way, a way that tells the story
and leaves it to the audience to pass judgment. And the central
performances really carry that way of storytelling, too, making this an
interesting film to watch, which will probably take a long time to digest
- so well worth a look for sure!
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