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The effect of institutional corruption on an idealistic young Catholic priest could be the subject of a compelling, if necessarily provocative, film if it were handled with some subtlety, but “The Crime of Father Amaro” exhibits the shallow sensationalism characteristic of soap opera; and by cramming into a mere two hours enough incident to fill a Spanish-language miniseries of “Thorn Birds” length, it winds up mawkish rather than moving, hectoring instead of instructive. Carlos Carrera’s film has become a boxoffice sensation in Mexico, but its success can be traced to the shocking subject matter rather than the quality of its treatment. It’s basically a modern variant of the sort of movies Otto Preminger was once so expert in concocting. They might not have been good films in any objective sense, but the hint of the scandalous attached to their plots usually attracted large audiences.

Based on an 1875 Portuguese novel but updated to a contemporary Mexican setting, the picture centers on the angelic-looking, recently-ordained Father Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal), who’s on his way to take up his first post as assistant to Father Benito (Sancho Gracia), an old, established pastor of a parish in a modest provincial town. Amaro, it seems, is a favorite of the local bishop–among other things he was sent to study canon law in Rome–and the placement is designed to give him some practical experience preparatory to his returning to the episcopal see to become an important power in the diocese. His high-minded character is exhibited when the bus on which he’s traveling is ambushed by bandits, and he gives his own money to an old man who’s lost the nest egg with which he planned to open a shop. (Why he hadn’t been denuded of his cash too isn’t explained.) After his arrival, however, he finds the assignment fraught with difficulties. Father Benito proves to be collecting funds for a hospital secretly from the local drug lord, and when their cozy relationship is made public by a young journalist, Amaro is called on by the bishop to squelch the scandal by using the church’s influence to force the newspaper involved to print a false retraction. The young priest is also shocked by the pastor’s intimate relationship with a local restaurant owner, who also happens to serve as the parish housekeeper. Further trouble arises from the activity of Father Natalio (Damian Alcazar), a priest in a nearby parish who espouses liberation theology and has become friendly with local rebels; Amaro respects his passionate concern for the peasants, but must serve as the bishop’s instrument to force the rebellious man back into the fold or punish him. All of these difficulties fade into the background, however, when Amaro gets involved with beautiful young Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancon), the erstwhile girlfriend of the muckraking reporter who had exposed Father Benito’s dealings; before long the two are meeting clandestinely in the home of the parish sacristan (Amelia goes there supposedly to help the man’s mentally-challenged daughter), and their affair has the expectedly tragic, melodramatic outcome.

The overarching issue in “Father Amaro” is a potent one–how easily a young man can lose his innocence under pressure of his “professional” demands and his libido–but it requires careful, sensitive handling; and Carrera proves decidedly heavy-handed. The succession of seedy episodes almost becomes comical, and some of the secondary characters–most notably a strange, witch-like local woman named Dionisia, played to excess by Luisa Huerta–are more like caricatures. Bernal does a good job capturing the young priest’s hesitant manner, but he doesn’t succeed in bringing the figure’s varied motives into sharp relief; the fault may lie in the writing more than his acting, but the result is that the young man remains a fuzzy, indistinct creation– blankly handsome and emotionally opaque. The other performances are at best workmanlike, though Ernesto Gomez Cruz catches the easy worldliness of the local bishop.

“The Crime of Father Amaro” looks reasonably good, though it’s basically a spare, no-frills production. The problem isn’t so much with its body and with its soul. At heart the picture is more salacious telenovela than serious drama.