Wild Tales

Spoilers.

I didn't really know anything about Wild tales the first time I sat down to watch it. It had come highly recommendedand I think it's nice when you can sit down to something knowing as little about it as possible. Wild Tales was a rollercoaster I wasn't expecting.

1. We start in motion. A lady is late for a flight. She's good-looking and as she boards we notice guys checking her out. One seems embarrassed to be caught looking at her and another, an older man donning a polo neck seems to fancy his chances and tries his luck. The flirtations are so obvious and the guy thinks he's playing it so smooth that it's pretty hilarious and I'm already hooked and down to watch some kind of mature, sassy Argentine rom-com. But with incredible momentum, that set-up is entirely pulled from beneath your feet as a weird set of coincidences begin to occur. At this point I'm wondering what I'm watching. It all happens so fast . And just as my brain is catching up to the possibility of what is happening, so too are the characters on screen and everything builds to a helpless panic as the plane plummets towards the ground. And then we cut away to an elderly couple sitting in a peaceful garden for the perfect punchline to set the tone for the rest of the movie as a dark comedy. Brilliant.

What a hook. What a perfect way to grab your attention. It's a promise to the audience of more to come.

This short prelude to Wild Tales is better than most full length movies. It has everything: romance, comedy, tension, a twist. It might be my favourite beginning of any film.

2. The tone shifts to a rainy night at a roadside cafe - a horror film setting if there ever was one. Inside, a doe-eyed waitress goes to greet their only customer as he runs in from the rain. But it's someone she recognises who has wronged her family past. The second story is perhaps one of the more straightforward simple stories and relies on the absolute thrill of watching a fat old cooker lady be an absolute psychopath. She steals the story. The customer is established as enough of an asshole that we feel plenty of catharsis when he meets his demise and the introduction of his son does very little to complicate the situation. The characters here are pretty one-dimensional and this might be the weakest story in Wild Tales and that might sound like I'm damning it with faint praise, but I'm not, I'm praising it with faint damning. It's still funny and has enough going on to easily warrant it's inclusion in the anthology. That we get so much catharsis at the customers' death is perhaps an insight into our own wilder tendancies.

3. This one might be my favourite of the bunch. It's so raw and simple. There's nothing really all that clever about it but it's so revealing that I recognise so much of myself in the guy driving the Audi and could easily picture myself getting into a similar situation. The way things descend into the two men entwined, mindlessly clubbing away at eachother is a real statement on the male condition.

The use of music and the desert setting reminded me quite a bit of Breaking Bad another great study of the male condition.

4. We go from perhaps the most savage to one of the most bureaucratic stories. The story of a demolitions engineer driven to revenge acutely portrays the small indignities that living in today'ssociety puts on you. Not just parking tickets, but divorce lawyers, customer assistance that doesn't listen to the customer, job redundancies, nagging wives. It's a straw on the camel'sback kind of story. I love all of his interactions with DMV staff and their easy dismissal of his frastrations. Also the cinematography and almost religious music as the demolitions expert prepares and carries out his revenge; in one shot, observed from the POV of an ATM machine, the light of the screen reflects back in our heroes' eyes as if he is now enlightened.

5. Another story of bureaucracy, this time though exploring the problems that come with wealth: both the leeches that try to profit from every opportunity and the hold it has over it's posessor, who hates to see it slip away. I love the clueless innocent Gardener whose class statusmakes him so pliant and the father who is constantly stood either arms folded or head in hands in the most defensive posture possible as though guarding his money as these vultures peck away at it. The way this story builds with each new reason introduced to extract a little more money is excellent and shares a lot with the previous story's straw on the camel's back nature.

6. After two slightly more low key stories we go out with a literal bang. The story immediately starts with a rapturous energy on the dancefloor of a wedding and prepares us for a truly more 'wild' tale. We follow the bride through a tempestuous wedding reception in which she ends up rivaling Amy Dunne in Gone Girl. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But I love that rather than this be a depressing tale of discovering infidelity and breaking up it's a story of recognising that they are equally fucked up and probably deserve each other. Again it's a mini version of Gone Girl.

The stories are not only impressive in themselves but also in the way they are presented. The stories each increase in length. The shortest first, with the final story being the longest. There's a natural momentum there, but even moreso in the stories being told. We start with a fantastic hook and then slow down before building to the momentus car fight, then again we slow down before building again to the craziest fucking wedding ever. It's pretty much a traditional 3-act structure.

I love this film and I hope you can see why I picked it. There's really something in there for everyone and it's a great example of just how good foreign cinema can be.

5 scorned brides out of 5