RAISING THEIR VOICES MEXICAN FILM DEPICTING CATHOLIC CRIMES SPURS PROTESTS.

Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer

MEXICAN DIRECTOR Carlos Carrera knew that his film, ``El Crimen del Padre Amaro'' (``The Crime of Father Amaro''), would attract controversy in the midst of the Roman Catholic Church sex scandal.

But he never expected that the reactionary protest hatched over the summer in Mexico - a predominantly Catholic country - would spill north of the border, where the film opens Friday.

``People are really outraged,'' the 40-year-old filmmaker said recently while promoting ``Padre Amaro'' at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. ``It's not a problem for a newspaper to publish a story about a priest who embezzles money or abuses a child sexually. I think what really bothers people is to see it exposed in a movie.''

The subtitled film, which depicts a corruptible Catholic Church and a few wayward priests, clearly has many people outraged. It tells the story of a young priest (played by Gael Garcia Bernal of ``Amores Perros'' and ``Y Tu Mama Tambien'' fame) who seduces a teenage girl. But the sexual relationship only begins to explain the waves of protest now flooding Samuel Goldwyn Films, the film's North American distributor.

Between 200 and 300 letters pour into the company's Los Angeles and New York City offices daily. And that pales compared to the even bigger protest over the summer in Mexico, where the Catholic Church called for the film's boycott.

Some churches distributed fliers claiming the movie endorses drug taking and prostitution, which it doesn't. But the controversy piqued the interest of moviegoers.

``Padre Amaro'' became the highest-grossing homegrown film in the history of Mexico and recently was named its official nominee for the foreign language film competition at the Oscars. Nobody expects it to break records here, but groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are ensuring people know every detail of the film - including the end - just in case.

All one has to do is log on to a computer. The Internet is full of denouncements such as one from Gerri Pare, director of the USCCB office for film and broadcasting. She boils down the film to ``a corrosive view of the Catholic Church and its priests in particular.''

Likewise, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights calls the film ``wholly fictitious'' and ``vicious.''

``If the clergy are not dishonest and corrupt, they are vile and abusive,'' writes Louis Giovino, the league's director of communications, of the movie.

Fueling the fire is the fact that this modern adaptation of the 1875 novel by Portuguese author Jose Maria Eca del Queiroz comes as the Catholic Church is trying to restore confidence after months of scandal over sexual abuse by its priests.

The film does nothing to support this cause, but supporters believe that it gets people thinking.

``There are many, many people who have been hurt by the Catholic Church, and some of these people are artists,'' said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice. ``This is an expression of art that reflects the deep pain and concern and outrage and anger.

``It's a tough film,'' adds Kissling. ``It's blasphemous, but blasphemy is allowed. Blasphemy is not a crime.''

``Padre Amaro'' follows the ambitious young cleric to his newly assigned parish in a remote Mexican village. The church is run by a corrupt priest who launders drug money and sleeps with his housekeeper.

It's the woman's daughter, Amelia, with whom Amaro has an illicit affair that results in an unwanted pregnancy.

During one of their earlier encounters, Amaro wraps the girl, played by Ana Claudia Talancon, in the silken blue robe from the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe and tells her that she's ``more beautiful than the Virgin.''

This scene, and another in which an old woman feeds her communion wafer to a cat, doesn't sit well with critics like the USCCB's Pare, who calls the blasphemy ``especially hurtful.''

``The movie's shallow characterizations only underline the film's vicious perspective that leaves one both saddened and outraged by its distortions,'' writes Pare. Many of these points are echoed in the handwritten and preprinted protest letters that continue to pour into Samuel Goldwyn Films.

``The basic view is that there are sacrilegious things that are taking place in the film - the Eucharist and the sexual relationship and, obviously, the issue that there's a pregnancy - that, from a Catholic perspective, they view as being something that shouldn't be presented,'' says Meyer Gottlieb, Samuel Goldwyn Films' president. ``Clearly, just hearing about the film is what is getting these people so upset. If they're going to be upset, I'd like them to be upset after they've seen the film rather than just anticipating there's an issue.''

Blind criticism isn't new to Carrera, the director, whose own family was divided over the film prior to its release.

He says that even his ``ultraconservative Catholic'' mother was ``very worried.''

``But she liked it after she saw it,'' Carrera said with a grin. ``What do you expect? She's my mother.''

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) Gael Garcia Bernal stars as a priest, left, who impregnates a teenager played by Ana Claudia Talancon (at right with Bernal) in ``El Crimen del Padre Amaro.'' The film, which opens in the United States on Friday, has drawn ire from Roman Catholics - and broken a box-office record in Mexico.

(3) Carlos Carrera