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Carnage

2002, Movie, NR, 130 mins

Carnage: Review

CARNAGE | CARNAGES
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Twenty-nine year-old French director Delphine Gleize's debut feature spins a fascinating, sometimes mystical variation on the notion that a butterfly's fluttering wings can cause a hurricane halfway around the world. A young matador, Victor (Julien Lescarret), is gored in southern Spain and the lives of a group of tangentially related individuals scattered across Europe change forever. Victor, the son of a celebrated bullfighter who was killed during a fatal encounter in the corrida, is gored by his very first bull, a snorting bete noire named Romero. In northern France, little Winnie (Raphaelle Molinier), an epileptic who's kept on Valium to stave off seizures, is deeply affected by watching the drama unfold on TV. Winnie's teacher, Jeanne (Lucia Sanchez), a native Spaniard who's been having an affair with married scientist Jacques (Jacques Gamblin), is disturbed by the fact that her own mother, Alicia (Angela Molina), doesn't seem to remember much about Jeanne's childhood. Jeanne convinces Alicia to spend a weekend in Lille, and the truth about her mother's past is revealed in the aftermath of a shocking accident. Jacques's lonely and very pregnant wife Betty (French pop star Lio), meanwhile, has been acting strangely. She, too, is keeping a secret which Jacques will learn only moments before Betty gives birth. Twenty-nine-year-old aspiring actress Carlotta (Chiara Mastroianni) aches to "exist" and joins a rebirthing class where nude strangers search for their childhood emotions in a swimming pool. One of those strangers is suicidal philosopher Alexis (Clovis Cornillac), who joins after following Carlotta from a supermarket. Having given up on philosophy, Alexis now wants to become a figure skater. And in a cramped mobile home somewhere in the Belgian countryside, a taxidermist (Pascal Bongard) celebrates his birthday with his domineering mother (Esther Gorintin), who brings him a set of bull's horns as a present. The horns, it turns out, once belonged to Victor's bull, and as each story line unfolds, we realize that these diverse characters are all about to have a life-altering encounter with the slaughtered Romero, whose eyes, flesh and bones, still imbued with taurine power, have been disseminated across Europe. In this world, nothing about life can be predicted, except perhaps death and the possibility of rebirth; it's all entirely dependent on unforeseen factors and apparently random events. The film becomes a complex tissue of intersecting lives, but Gleize handles each developing story with amazing ease, and the fabulist touches are the icing on a very tasty cake. (In French, Spanish and Italian, with English subtitles) leave a comment --Ken Fox
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