Fausto 5.0

A dynamically dystopic modern take on the 16th-century legend of a doctor who sold his soul to the devil, Fausto 5.0 (the title pays homage to four other famous adaptations) is a chilling, gray vision of soullessness and wicked temptation. Miguel Ángel Solá plays a middle-aged sawbones, specializing in terminal cases, whose day-to-day struggles with death have turned him into a shell of a man. When a mysterious, sleazy former patient--one that seems to have miraculously survived and yet Fausto doesn't remember him--forces his gratitude on the doctor in the form of fantasy fulfillment, Fausto begins his slide down the slippery slope into a purgatorial nightmare that is greased with young flesh and illicit thrills. As the persistent ex-patient, Goya-winner Eduardo Fernandez is dangerously persuasive and Solá is appropriately unnerved, but while the film's imaginative, collaborative threesome of young Spanish directors design every sight and sound to make you itch with discomfort along with Fausto, they seem to lose confidence in their brilliant concoction as the film plays on. What begins as David Lynchian delirium is brought down a peg by improbably expedient turns of plot and behavior, as well as superfluous superimposed flashes of symbolic inner turmoil that are distracting in their graphic overkill. Still, while these imperfections are frustrating, the film itself remains riveting. Recommended, overall. (R. Blackwelder)