In this most modern and civilized of times and worlds, society and its individuals have evolved to live so observantly in relation to institutions and others that we seem to have let our most primal and instinctual human responses take back-seat to formality, cordiality, and a sense of accepted teeth-clenching niceness, however dishonest. This is the idea that writer and director Damián Szifron explores and explodes in his new film Wild Tales, a satirical and darkly comical anthology of six short stories that see middle-class people letting loose and losing all control, and to our enormous pleasure.
Wild Tales (Relatos salvajes) provides gut-aimed laughs from mining the most hilarious, frustrating, and hilariously frustrating moments of daily human injustices, and sees them through to their most over-the-top (and bloody) ends. In the vignette-style stories, book-ended by fade ins and outs to black, each of the story’s mundane or otherwise pathetic middle-class main characters are introduced in their entirely familiar and normal worlds that they live in: a meek waitress is stunned to serve a man from her past; a demolition worker’s car is towed; a newly-wed learns a devastating secret of her husband– during her wedding party. As this reviewer notes, it would best serve the audience’s fullest enjoyment to go into this thing with little to no foresight of where each story leads, as the pleasures stem from the unexpected inciting incidents that spark revenge-bent courses, making for the most delicious part of the film’s enjoyment.
Wild Tales lets its audience have a bit of fun amongst the crowd of composed, “civilized” films, that it so joyfully pokes at until laughs (and blood) are shed.
It’s not readily known from the start what lies ahead in each story, which is to the film’s credit. For a movie that is about people going postal, it maintains its composure with tight film-making senses and relative normalcy, constructing serious tones that builds sizable tension. Szifron and his skilled ensemble of actors never slog or rush their way through any of the set-ups, or towards the fun of the “turn,” and always keep the characters’ motivations in check; that is, until it corkscrews into its most mad and absurd conclusions. The film has a good lightness to it that sees good fun implored here, but operating in a more elevated and high-minded head space.
The official Argentinian selection for Best Foreign Film in the 87th Academy Awards, Wild Tales also claims a number of other prestigious selections of 2014, including selections for Cannes, Telluride, and Toronto International Film Festival. While it won’t knock off the likes of Poland’s Ida, Russia’s Leviathan, or Mauritania’s Timbuktu this Sunday, Wild Tales lets its audience have a bit of fun amongst the crowd of composed, “civilized” films, that it so joyfully pokes at until laughs (and blood) are shed.
Wild Tales is in theaters this Friday.
