THE CITY AND THE MOUNTAINS

"The explosive and controversial film version of El crimen del Padro Amaro moves the action of the original novel from nineteenth-century Portugal to modern Mexico. Both worlds share a rigid provincial culture, materialistic and moralistic. In both, lives are constrained by the power of social conventions. The collision between the ambiguities of women's lives, bound by chaste rules yet inflamed by romance, and the severe vows of Roman Catholic churchmen, leads inexorably to Father Amaro's crime." In the Portuguese cathedral city of Leiria, the young Father Amaro is drawn into a forbidden love. The story unfolds tragically as moral dilemmas and human weakness create a timeless drama.