A Spanish dark comedy with body

A zippy Grand Guignol about romantic jealousy, corporate ambition, domestic suffocation, and trying to squeeze a big fat corpse into a blazing furnace, Ferpect Crime opens the 14th Philadelphia Film Festival tonight with a wicked grin and a lot of gusto.

The latest from Spanish filmmaker Álex de la Iglesia (800 Bullets, Dance With the Devil), this over-the-top homage to Hitchcock and Hollywood noir is set in Yeyo's, a bustling Madrid department store. Here, the slick, smooth Rafael (Guillermo Toledo) presides over the women's section, sweet-talking his customers and seducing his beauteous staff of salesgirls.

Rafael, who narrates the film with an egocentric elan, is on top of the world - or so he thinks. Then it all goes to hell: Don Antonio (Luis Varela), the men's-department manager, beats Rafael out for a much-coveted promotion, a fight ensues, and, well, somebody ends up hanging from a clothes hook in a dressing-room cubicle.

Rafael is left with a guilty conscience, a bloody forehead, and the classic murder comedy (and thriller) quandary: How to dispose of the body?

Enter Lourdes (Mónica Cervera), a not very attractive sales associate, who seems to have been monitoring Rafael's every move, and offers to help him, for a price. Become her lover, her husband, the father of her brood, and everything will be fine.

De la Iglesia uses every trick in the book - scary close-ups, spinning 360-degree shots, pulsing music - to exaggerated effect. Lourdes, who is as wily as she is homely, proves to be a blackmailer extraordinaire, and Rafael is her pathetic, sniveling patsy. When she brings him home to meet the family, the scene is uproarious: the father sleeps through dinner, the mother serves chickpeas with contempt, and Lourdes' 8-year-old sister calmly declares that she's pregnant.

If Ferpect Crime (the Spanish title sports the same typographic joke: Crimen ferpecto) is cartoonish at times, that's the intent. De la Iglesia isn't going for subtlety, but he is going for more than slapstick laughs. As the plot thickens and the cops turn suspicious, the film takes jokey stabs at rampant consumerism, frivolous fashion trends, the state of marriage, the media, and sex as a marketing tool.

Toledo has a mock bravura and sense of physical comedy that work well both when his character is seemingly king of the hill and prisoner of his own undoing. Cervera plays "ugly" with relish, popping her eyes, pouting and gloating - a shrewd shrew who knows what she wants and how to get it.

That nothing works out exactly as she - or he - had planned makes ferpect sense in this delicious dark comedy.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/stevenrea.

Ferpect Crime *** (Out of four stars)

Written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Álex de la Iglesia, directed by de la Iglesia. With Guillermo Toledo, Mónica Cervera and Luis Varela. In Spanish with subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 45 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (cartoon violence, sex, nudity, profanity, adult themes)

Playing at: Prince Music Theater tonight at 6 and 8:30. Director de la Iglesia is expected to be on hand for the opening-night gala screening.

Below is a schedule of today's Philadelphia Film Festival events. For information, ticket sales, and box-office locations, call 267-765-9700, visit TLA video stores, or go to www.phillyfests.com.

6 and 8:30 p.m. Ferpect Crime (Spain). Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St.

10 p.m. Opening-night party. Top of the Tower, 1717 Arch St., 50th floor.

Tickets: Combination screening and party, $40; film only, $15; party only: $30 at the door.