Leading the charge in the recent wave of French-language gore (from good to bad, in order: High Tension, Frontier(s), and the dreadful Them) was the Belgian film Calvaire, all the way back in 2004. It’s a particularly pungent and pointless piece of work (though there’s little onscreen gore, actually), borrowing liberally from Tobe Hooper and John Boorman, with a shopworn plot: the hero’s car breaks down in the middle of the countryside, he is rescued by an overfriendly innkeeper, the villagers have peculiar objects of affection, and so on.
In Calvaire‘s favor, however, are its moody, otherworldly photography — the trees in the wood look as bleached out as skulls — and its deadpan, unsettling surreality. (There’s even a bar scene right out of Satantango.) No doubt someone will try to wring some meaning from the religious symbolism, or the fact that the secondary characters seem to all be variations of the innkeeper, but that requires putting more thought into analyzing this film than it deserves. Rating: one pig squeal and a half.
Popularity: 1%
Post a Comment