MovieChat Forums > Perfidia (2009) Discussion > Someone explain this story (spoilers)

Someone explain this story (spoilers)


I would love to hear someone's interpretation/explanation of the story in this film. I think I have pieced together some of it, but there are major points that I cannot explain.

So I get that the guy in the hotel room is a hit man and had been contracted to kill the woman staying in Room 127 of the hotel. Our guy in in the room next door. There is the scene where he tracks her to the bar where she meets up with 2 men and one woman. It appears that the man she is with is the same man that our guy had a relationship with at one time. There are flashbacks of them together at the same hotel, apparently in love. The movie title "Perfidy," or "perfidia" in spanish, means betrayal or treachery, so I presume the meaning is significant to the story.

So this is where I'm getting lost. Did our guy feel betrayed when his lover left him for a woman? Is that why he killed him? Who put the hit on her and why? Did our guy know that she would be with him?

Somebody help me out. I think I would like this film a lot more if I understood what was going on.

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The money came with personal photographs of her, which points to a husband or someone else who knew her and wanted her killed, who also knew which hotel room she would be in and that the hit should be at 4:00am.

The movie doesn't say, but the most likely explanation is that the woman's husband found out she was cheating on him and paid Gustavo (the name he gave the hotel) to kill her, and it was a coincidence that her lover had been his lover (and maybe still was his lover) who betrayed him - the perfidy.

Gustavo certainly knew his lover would be with her that night, and I suppose he could have killed her and not him, unless the contract was on both of them. But without doubt he did feel betrayed, and he had explicitly confronted his lover with the prospect in the flashback at the waterfall and had his concerns ignored.

And Gustavo wrote the info about her hotel room on the back of the photo of himself and the lover together, which suggests that he knew from the beginning that his lover was involved. Maybe the hit on the woman just gave Gustavo the opportunity to kill the lover who'd betrayed him.

I think there's a limit to how far we can go in understanding this movie, though. I think we have to accept mystery as an integral part of it that can't be analyzed away completely. Just in writing this bit, I came across many other questions that I can't find answers to in the movie, like what the lover meant when he said "I thought you'd understand" after giving Gustavo the little carved animal figure he said he'd found.

Was that supposed to answer G's question, "If you ever leave me, can I come with you?" Beats me. And why was 4:00am given as the time to kill her? There are lots more questions, but I'd get nowhere but tired if I tried to list them all now.

The writer-director may not even understand the movie entirely, which is another way of saying it's inspired - more like poetry than a Hollywood movie. That's why many of the morons who write reviews at Netflix (the only place I know of where this movie can be seen) hate it.

Maybe it will come out on DVD someday with a director's commentary answering every question and filling in every gap, but I almost don't want that (the commentary - I'd love to have the DVD). I'd prefer to think of it as poetry, always revealing new insights and raising new questions every time I watch it. Movies like that are made about once a millennium.

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Thanks for your detailed response. Frankly, I didn't think I'd get one because most people pan this film. I like your analysis of what appears to be so and I like even more that you acknowledge that some things just don't have clear interpretations, like poetry. I agree that a DVD w/ commentary would be useful. Maybe that's in the offing.

Thanks, again.

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I think it's more to do with the hitman and the bf than the female he was with. It would make much more sense if the third party (who supplied the money/photos) were related to the female, though the hitman informing him (third party) because of his past relationship with the man. Sort of a two-fold revenge thing. "I can kill her, and kill him at the same time" thing.

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It seems that we all agree that the bf had betrayed the hit man and that the hit (the woman) had betrayed someone also. So there are two people involved in a betrayal who happen to be together in the same hotel room. The people they betrayed are literally outside, either in person or by phone. Most of the events take place in hitman's room as he prepares for the hit. Except the restaurant scene. There was something really haunting about that scene. You can just imagine how painful it must have been for the hit man to see his former lover loving someone else.

This movie has to be watched over and over to pick up all the small cues and messages.

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Just saw this film and thought I could offer a perspective. Gus had an affair with the man sometime in the recent past. The man brought him to Ithaca Falls for the affair. There, the man loved him and broke his heart. When Gus asks, "if you ever leave me, can I come with you", the man responds by giving him a carving of an animal (maybe an elephant?) and says, "Here, I found this." And basically that the answer to his question is in the gift. Now, reference back to the poem, "Ithaca" by Constantine P. Cavafythat, that Gus's father use to read to him:

to stop at Phoenician trading centres,
and to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.

She (he) hasn't anything else to give him. He is referencing the poem to say, "This affair, in Ithaca Falls, is all there is." You can see the look on Gus's face as he takes the carving. His eyes go dead. He is crushed. In real time he is trying to come to terms that the feelings he is having are not going to be reciprocated. That "Ithaca" hasn't anything else to give him. He bared his soul to the man about the loss of his father and brother. Cried as his lover read the poem "Ithaca" out loud to him. And now he is being told that this encounter is just a one off thing.

Notice the body language when they are together in flashbacks. Gus is emotional and vulnerable and the man is always looking off and says things like, "Don't think about that now. Come here." In other words, "Let's not get heavy. This is just for fun, and pictures."

The woman's husband (He is in one of the photos with her that came out of the envelope) put the hit on her because she is cheating on him. There is a second photo laying below that one on the bench of the woman and his lover, her now boyfriend. She tells the desk clerk, "hold my calls", (I'll be busy having an affair).

As Gus is traveling on the bus to Ithaca he is listening to "their song" on his IPod and rolling the carving around in his hand recalling the love he had for the man, the heartbreak, and his reason for returning. His body is absorbing the familiar surroundings as the bus gets closer to where his lover broke his heart. As he walks down the hallway of the hotel toward his room he stops and glares at the room next door. "He's" in there. In his room he tries to listen through the walls just to hear the sound of his voice. It is painful. Then the most bizarre thing, of all the bizarre things, happens. He puts his ear buds in and lipsyncs to Dusty Springfields "I Only Want to Be With You" while using his gun as a microphone.

When it comes time to do the hit, it's all business with the woman. He is not taking revenge on her. He and the man were already a relic of the past. He shoots her in the back of the head. In her sleep. For his lover, though, it's personal. The lover sits up, startled at the muted sound of the silencer, and sees Gus. Gus wants to be seen. He shoots his lover twice but he doesn't die immediately. And Gus lays next to him as he bleeds to death, and in shock. It is important to note that Gus killed his lover, perhaps as part of an assignment, but for certain because he was hurt. Less out of revenge, anger, or business, and more out of pain. There is a screen shot of a quote by Guillermo Bedregal in the opening of the film, in Spanish, that translates more less this way: "To make your love fit, something would have to die in the world."

This is the narrative I believe this film lays out. The film, however, feeds this information to us in small pieces and out of order creating a sense of confusion and a need to make sense of it all. I think it's really well done.

There is one thing I wonder about though. Someone pushed the photos and cash under Gus's hotel room door and called him at 4:00am to green light the hit. I think it's the husband and I have a feeling that he may appear somewhere in the movie and I've just missed it. Anyone?

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Just watched this somber film. Is it possible the husband is somewhere in the bar scene..I'll have to watch this movie again.
Thanks, guys, for the insightful and very thoughtful insights into the meaning of this odd flick.

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