YMMV / El Crimen del Padre Amaro

• Adaptation Displacement: From the relatively unknown 19th century Portuguese novel of the same name.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • While the movie's narrative is clearly an attack on the Catholic Church's clergy, and churchgoers blind to their wrongdoings, the movie's ending can be interpreted as a vindication of the conservative values that the Church advocates — with Amaro (and possibly Amelia, see below) being punished by their sins. The original book being written at the end of the 19th Century only adds to this interpretation.
  • The movie's ending came to be seen by many viewers as unintentional advocacy for legal abortion, as the whole tragedy could have been prevented if Amelia had access to a safe abortion clinic. It helps that the movie was released in 2001, six years before abortion was legalized on Mexico City.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Amelia. Is she an innocent victim of Amaro's selfishness? An hypocrite that continued living in sin, despite being deeply religious, and attacking Ruben for trying to bring to light the sort of wrongdoing that ended up happening to her in the end? Or someone living in conflict over her budding sexuality and her Catholic upbringing? Pretty much the only thing everyone agrees on is that her death is a tragedy.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: A very famous example: The Mexican Catholic Church attacked the film before it was even released, heavily campaigning to discourage people from seeing it, while lobbying to ban its release. It backfired spectacularly and the film became the highest box-office grossing Mexican film ever released.

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