Wild Tales ***
Dir: Damián Szifron. With: Dario Grandinetti, Maria
Marull, Rita Cortese, Julieta Zylberberg, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Walter Donado,
Ricardo Darin. 15 cert, 122 min
Vengeance has powered countless movies over the
years, but rarely can it have been given such a thorough – and thoroughly
entertaining – showcase as it gets in Wild Tales, Argentinian writer-director Damián Szifron’s Oscar-nominated portmanteau of tales from the dark side of human
nature. The agenda is set in a short, sharp prologue, as a mid-air conversation
between a music critic and a model leads to an entire passenger roster
realising they’ve wronged the wrong guy; with the revelation nobody paid for
their own ticket, the stomach promptly plummets several thousand feet. Adopt
the brace position: we’re in for extreme turbulence.
On the ground, a waitress ponders whether to poison
the customer who fleeced her parents, a flash motorist squares up to a
middle-lane hogger, a wedding party unravels into bloody chaos after an
infidelity accusation…: time and again, we’re left watching – sometimes
horrified, most often amused – as people are pushed to the brink and beyond, and
small lapses in self-control change the courses of multiple lives. You can be
driving an Audi 3000 or wearing black tie – in this world, inner beast prowls
dangerously close to civilised surface; when temperatures rise to jungle level,
primal instinct takes over.
Szifron plays Looney Tunes variations on his theme.
Each time, we know our vexed Wile E. Coyotes will pay for their pursuit of
life’s blithe Road Runners, yet we’re never sure just what that payment will
involve. Brained by an anvil? Blown to smithereens? We expect Ricardo Darín, Argentinian cinema’s Rock Steady Eddie, to stay cool, but even his
workaholic engineer – left carless after a parking violation – finds himself
worn down by the city’s byzantine regulations. Occasionally, the eruptions prove
liberating; more commonly, these characters emerge bruised and bedraggled, if
they emerge at all. No-one comes out of it looking good exactly.
Save for one man – Szifron himself, for whom Wild Tales serves as a sharp-edged
calling card: he pulls off intimate, knife-in-the-back character business as
well as blowing stuff up in screenfilling set-pieces. (We see Darin demolishing
cooling towers, but the whole project’s a supremely controlled explosion.) When
the dust settles, you might question what it adds up to: an extended exercise
in schadenfreude, perhaps, or
possibly a valuable reminder, in this increasingly intemperate universe, of the
benefits of keeping your fists in your pockets. Either way, while it’s boiling
over, it’s satisfyingly snippy fun – the movie equivalent of cutting three
inches off a cheating ex’s trousers.
Wild Tales opens in selected cinemas from today.
