In Agustin Yanes' SIN NOTICIAS DE DIOS (badly translated into English as DON'T TEMPT ME, which in reality should have been NO NEWS FROM GOD), Heaven is a luxurious black-and-white nightclub perpetually set in the Fifties, administered by Marina D'Angelo (Fanny Ardant) and entertained by Lola (Victoria Abril). Hell is a soup kitchen where people speak English, where its administrator (Gael Garcia Bernal) looks like a kingpin right out of "Miami Vice" and where Carmen (Penelope Cruz), a lipstick lesbian works as a waitress, much to her disgust (since she later reveals she was a drug lord on Earth and weeps when seeing GOODFELLAS). Both angels have been summoned by their bosses to claim the soul of one stupid boxer (Demian Bichir). Here is when the story turns into PULP FICTION, but with none of its originality. True, some of the funnier scenes involve business transactions between diplomatic representatives of Heaven and Hell and some rich dialog between Ardant and Bernal, as opposites who appear to have quite a bit in common (more than they would dare reveal but only hint at through JD Salinger's book "The Catcher in the Rye"). Other than that, I didn't quite get the whole mess that the convoluted story is and a subplot where two cops (Cristina Marcos and Luis Tosar) are also after Bichir's tail leads nowhere. It's a shame, because there is a scene where the very masculine character Cruz plays (a man trapped in a sexpot's body) threatens Marcos with doing something rather nasty to her with a fork, but that never happens. As a matter of fact, Cruz's character is really the only interesting one of the lot (Abril's Lola is thankless, suffering in elegant silence until she decides to shoot 'em up) because of the ambiguity she represents. She would have the been the real reason to concoct a story out of as a person sent back to Earth as Hell for some serious expiation in the wrong gender. SWITCH, but with a dark twist. Needless to say, that didn't make the cut and all that remains is this half-baked attempt at a post-modern mediation of what it is to be good and evil and the grey area in between.
Review of No News from God
