Film / Reviews
Wild Tales
Wild Tales (15)
Argentina/Spain 2014 122 mins Dir: Damián Szifron Starring: Liliana Ackerman, Luis Manuel Altamirano García, Alejandro Angelini, Damián Benítez, Cristina Blanco, Gustavo Bonfigli, César Bordón
Argentinean director Damián Szifron’s collection of deliciously dark-hearted, frequently blood-soaked yarns feels like an update of Stephen King’s Creepshow scripted by Roald Dahl at his most scabrous. This blackly comic vengeance portmanteau was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, but never really stood a chance in a category so frequently dominated by suffering peasant flicks.
Wild Tales gets off to a flying start before its opening credits (a glorious montage of apex predators and their lunch) with the brief, slickly edited, superbly paced story of a music critic who flirts with a catwalk model on a flight, only to find that they have rather more in common than they suspected. As with each of these six stories, the less you know in advance the more you’ll enjoy them. So I’ll just stick to exploring the set-ups here. Most of the tales hinge on small incidents spiralling out of control, and three of them centre on motor vehicles. In one of these, a minor road rage tussle escalates so spectacularly that the violence turns almost cartoonish, which lets the morally conflicted off the hook for howling with laughter. Less ingeniously plotted is the story of a wealthy man who offers hard cash to a humble employee if he’ll take the fall for a fatal road accident. You may recall this plotline from Arbitrage, just as the crowd-pleasing tale of a chap (The Secret in Their Eyes star Ricardo Darin) whose life is ruined by over-zealous policing of parking regulations has echoes of Falling Down (and will certainly appeal to the Clifton tank-driving fraternity). The fact that he’s introduced as a demolition expert also gives a hint of where this one is likely to go. But at least these more familiar yarns don’t outstay their welcome and are never less than hugely enjoyable.
Elsewhere, a waitress recognises a customer as the man who destroyed her family, while the concluding tale serves up the most fabulously calamitous wedding ever captured on film, serving as a splendid antidote to all those dreadful nuptially-themed romcoms that Hollywood throws at us. It all adds up to a magnificent cathartic experience that could well prove to be the most fun you’ll have in an arthouse cinema all year.
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