Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

Uh... what now? Mix together the nihilism of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the misplaced devotion of Misery, and the French countryside, and you won't get Fabrice du Welz's Calvaire (or as the title's subtitle would have it The Ordeal), but you'll get a close enough approximation to start a journal entry about the film.

There's this singer, Marc, who does really low-rent gigs at places like retirement homes. He's on his way to a gala Christmas performance when his van breaks down in the middle of nowhere. He accepts the offer of a clean room from a strange innkeeper until his van can get fixed. Marc's detour starts heading downhill from there. The mechanic's always unavailable to come up. Marc is warned to stay away from the villagers, who are apparently too strange for words. And the innkeeper keeps stealing personal effects out of his van, while leaving things like money.

Then, one fateful morning, events stop heading downhill -- mostly because they go off a cliff and just go straight down. To explain would be telling, but I will say there's an undertaste of dark, dark, dark comedy in everything that follows, which is more than a little masked by the overtaste of "Oh shit oh shit oh shit."

Recommended. Sort of. It was a very strange film.

The totally awesome thing about dating someone who understands French is that you have an excuse to buy more French films and then you can watch with them while they criticize the subtitles. Last night I picked up 8 Women and That Obscure Object of Desire at Border's (who have surprisingly reasonable pricing on Criterion Collection DVDs). We watched 8 Women last night -- brilliant film, as always. It's like if an Agatha Christie mystery and a 1960s musical crashed head-on in the French countryside.