EL ASESINO DE PEDRALBES (The murderer of Pedralbes) is a documentary about José Luis Cerveto, who murdered in 1974 the rich owners of the house where he worked (in Pedralbes, a zone from Barcelona), husband and wife and was immediately convicted to death but after Franco's death, finally condemned to prison for 30 years.
The film is an excellent job, featuring a long interview with Cerveto, those who knew him as a child and as a teenager, his lawyer and some psychologists and doctors. You can see perfectly the background of such a man and the reasons of that horrible crime (hard infancy, pedophile tendencies, intelligence but evident psychological problems,...), everything shown (and there lies the greatness of the film) from the pure objectivity: the documentary doesn't judge Cerveto and his acts. It shows the murderer, his reasons, his behavior, his past and the time and place when he committed the murders (Spain late 70's, where homosexuality was still a crime and things were very different regarding justice).
EL ASESINO DE PEDRALBES is a hard movie, not for all tastes, but a brave and magnificent one, between the best spanish films of the 70's.
The film is an excellent job, featuring a long interview with Cerveto, those who knew him as a child and as a teenager, his lawyer and some psychologists and doctors. You can see perfectly the background of such a man and the reasons of that horrible crime (hard infancy, pedophile tendencies, intelligence but evident psychological problems,...), everything shown (and there lies the greatness of the film) from the pure objectivity: the documentary doesn't judge Cerveto and his acts. It shows the murderer, his reasons, his behavior, his past and the time and place when he committed the murders (Spain late 70's, where homosexuality was still a crime and things were very different regarding justice).
EL ASESINO DE PEDRALBES is a hard movie, not for all tastes, but a brave and magnificent one, between the best spanish films of the 70's.
