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Crimen Ferpecto

2004 film by Álex de la Iglesia

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ2566971
Source-derived summary

Crimen Ferpecto, released as The Perfect Crime in the United States, and as The Ferpect Crime in the United Kingdom, is a 2004 Spanish-Italian black comedy film co-written, produced and directed by Álex de la Iglesia. It stars Guillermo Toledo and Mónica Cervera.

Plot

Rafael is a women's clothing clerk at a large Madrid department store, Yeyo's. His department is filled with beautiful, comely young women whom Rafael routinely seduces. When Rafael vies for a management position with Don Antonio, a men's clothing clerk whom Rafael despises, a fluke causes Don Antonio to win the promotion. He fires Rafael and a fight ensues in which Rafael accidentally kills Don Antonio. Lourdes, an ugly and unassuming clerk at the store, witnesses the outcome of the fight, helps Rafael incinerate the body, and provides an alibi for the police. Rafael wins his coveted promotion, but at a terrible cost: Lourdes blackmails Rafael into an unwanted relationship. He is forced to fire his many former lovers, to marry Lourdes (she proposes on a live reality TV show) and to support clown-like women's clothing of her design. Rafael becomes so depressed he begins to hallucinate, seeing the ghost of Don Antonio who suggests Rafael should kill Lourdes.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Crimen Ferpecto” is 2004 film by Álex de la Iglesia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Crimen, Ferpecto and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Crimen, Ferpecto and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2004 film by Álex de la Iglesia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2566971. The first chronological checks are 2004.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Crimen Ferpecto”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Crimen Ferpecto primary sources, Crimen Ferpecto archive and Crimen research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Crimen Ferpecto”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Crimen Ferpecto” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.