Undescribable Perfection

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Don't Believe the Hype

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The body of a famous and beautiful movie star is brought to a local morgue where some young guys have their fun with it. How could they not? She's once in a lifetime. They get coked and liquored up and have a good time with her. Then the corpse wakes up. Is she a zombie? A metaphor for their guilt? Actually alive? A surreal combination of all those? It would have been cooler if it was.Nope, she's alive and there's no pretension whatsoever about it. Any theme is lost in this straight laser-focused twist on the kidnapped young woman thriller genre. It's a good twist for the genre, but other than that offers nothing new or of any substance to it.Oh, and you never find out why anyone thought she was dead in the first place - it's completely inexplicable.

Some movies have big spoilers in their own titles, basic plots or trailers. There, you have clues of what production team want you to know. I'll try not to go further.We are introduced in the very beginning (by journalists' fragmented threads on voice-over) to Anna Fritz persona and we are get to know that she is a worshiped celebrity. Her death is where it all begins.Then we are taken to the point of view of three curious guys that want to see her for the first and last time. What I can say it's not a good idea.This movie have some violent scenes. If you are more or less sensible to 'moral terror', despite the comments of the toughest viewers, I think you will suffer.From one specific moment, the story they are about to tell us, could perfectly fit in horror genre, but it clearly follows the way to a claustrophobic crime flick. The cast is good, especially for the pretty Alba Ribas who plays Anna Fritz (in some shots she looks a little like Chloë Sevigny). The characters are made for the plot, so don't expect a great character developing (runtime being 76', it's not possible in an action centered movie). The pace is fast, and it works. No place for being bored. Give it a chance!So from now on, it seems we have more reasons to be afraid of dying!

Wow! Well, Spanish films are always on the verge and this one is no exception. It is morbid and the story is quite ... morbid but wow! Three actors ( or you can say four) that make up the entire story and not for a single moment is boring or whatever. I mean , it was predictable that she will be caught at one point ( the lift scene) but besides that, it was really a suspense and you were on the guess.I must say that all four ( or three actors) are really great in their roles! Especially the main villain! But, really, all of them are quite believable.The theme of the film is really disturbing but, somehow, it is well done and entertaining. Nine from me. I would give it a ten if the last 10 seconds were a bit different. I expected her to smile or say something... Though I know that the ending is actually the most convenient one.

Put in charge of a female celebrity's dead body, a young morgue attendant boasts to his friends who insist in seeing the dead woman naked, and things only become more twisted as one of the friends expresses an interest in necrophilia in this independent thriller from Spain. From such a plot description alone, 'El Cadáver de Anna Fritz' might sound like a film done in incredibly bad taste, but it is rarely exploitative (only the briefest glimpses of the nude corpse are seen) and a sudden twist after eighteen minutes pulls the film in a decidedly different direction with the friends forced to make some tough moral decisions. None of the actors playing the three friends are particularly remarkable, but there are some interesting shifts in personality; most notably, the morgue attendant goes from reluctantly letting his friends in, afraid of losing his job, to giddily playing practical jokes on them. That said, Bernat Samuell has a bit of a bland character - he is pretty much the moral compass of the group throughout, but co-stars Christian Valencia and Albert Carbó undergo enough shifts in personality to keep things fresh. The plot also requires some suspension of disbelief (medically speaking in particular) but it is an engaging film through and through if one does not think about the probability of it too much. Several ideas raised by the film are fascinating, including celebrity worship and the ability of the human survival instinct to overtake rationality. Clocking in at only just over an hour in length too, the film is briskly paced and never outstays its welcome.