If you like a few movies by a particular director or producer, it's always tempting to explore lesser-known works by the same person. Sometimes that leads to finding unexpected gems, and sometimes it leads to the discovery that the one or two films you really enjoyed were the exception rather than the rule. That has been my experience with films by Merchant Ivory Productions, the director/producer team of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant. Howards End and The Remains of the Day have secure places on my shelf of favorites, but I've had much less luck in other titles in the Merchant Ivory Collection. The Perfect Murder, making it into the Merchant Ivory Collection by virtue of being executive-produced by Merchant though directed by Zafar Hai, marks the nadir of my experiences with Merchant Ivory.

The Perfect Murder uncomfortably tries to blend mystery, comedy, and what amounts to documentary material into a cohesive whole, but these different elements stubbornly refuse to come together into a coherent film. The premise sounds reasonable enough: Inspector Ghote of the Bombay police (Naseeruddin Shah) and visiting Swedish criminologist Svensson (Stellan Skarsgård) collaborate to solve a perplexing attack on the secretary of a rich businessman, while also struggling to crack a ring of diamond smugglers.

The film's awkwardness is evident right from the beginning, with a clumsily executed slapstick chase scene opening the film. We don't know who's involved or why we should be interested, and the action/comedy sequence certainly isn't well done enough to merit attention just by itself. Even the background music is obtrusive here, clearly pushing a comic theme on the viewer. The comedic angle returns at various times throughout the film, and never works very well at all: it always feels like we're being poked in the ribs and shown a sign that says "Laugh now." Sorry, it doesn't work quite that way.

One might hope for the mystery portion of the film to step in and carry the weight of the story, but that part is mishandled as well. The story is developed in such a sketchy manner that it's never all that clear how the plot is developing... which fits into my general theory that the filmmakers considered the mystery story to be incidental to whatever-it-is that The Perfect Murder is about.

My best guess as to what The Perfect Murder might be intended to be is a quasi-documentary film, offering a look at the sights and sounds of Bombay while giving us some halfway parodic views of its inhabitants. Skarsgård's character of Svensson certainly doesn't seem to be good for much of anything, story-wise, except standing in for the non-Indian viewer, a stranger in a strange land who can serve to point out odd customs and highlight differences in culture. I generally like Skarsgård, but here he doesn't really add anything to the film, for good or for bad. As a slice of life, The Perfect Murder might have been passably watchable if it hadn't been muddled up with a sloppy mystery story and ham-handed comedy, but as it is, it's simply a mess.

The DVD

Video

This 1988 film has more the look of something from the 1970s, probably as it was a fairly low-budget production to begin with. The image is extremely soft, with a generous amount of noise as well, and there's a slight brownish tint in the image most of the time. The print is not in perfect condition, with the occasional speckle or vertical line appearing in the image. It does appear in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio and is anamorphically enhanced.

Audio

The mono soundtrack is barely adequate, but that's the most that can be said for it. There's a definite tinny quality to the sound, especially when voices are raised. It's fairly muted, requiring the volume to be turned up quite a bit in order to get the dialogue clearly, but to its credit, there's little by way of hissing or background noise in the track.

English closed captions are available.

Extras

There are no special features on this disc. An insert booklet does give a bit of information about the film.

Final thoughts

I found The Perfect Murder to be perfectly off-putting; it managed to hit all the wrong notes for me, and managed to continue hitting them throughout its 93-minute running time. Successful neither as a comedy nor as a detective drama, it's suitable for only the most die-hard completionist fans of Merchant Ivory, and even then probably more as a curiosity than an actually enjoyable film. Skip it.