Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes) Review

I hadn’t watched a subtitled film for a number years and so it almost seemed a little daunting. Despite this, I broke my rule of never watching a subtitled film when tired and I thought there was a very good chance I would have to watch it in two halves (like with My Dinner with Andre). But it was such as easy watch that I stayed up and enjoyed it in one sitting. Due to the structure of the film, I could have easily broken the viewing down into multiple parts and it wouldn’t have taken much away from the experience.

I didn’t know anything about the film before I watched it, so I was unaware that it was actually an anthology film made up of 6 short stories. I was trying to recall any anthology films I had seen in the past and I think the only ones are the Sin City films and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I would say that Wild Tales is probably more similar to the latter. These short films took me back to the early days of youtube, where I used to enjoy watching short films – something I haven’t done for over a decade.

The short stories are all completely separate, but the tone is quite similar across each of the six parts and I particularly enjoyed the dark humour throughout. The recurring theme that I observed was revenge. Every story involves someone seeking retribution and all but two stories involve at least one death.

I loved all of the short stories, but my favourite has to be the road rage one. It had the simplest premise of all of the stories – just two strangers brought together in a brief moment of road rage which then escalates dramatically. It was brilliantly choreographed and for me probably the funniest section of the film.

Some might think that a man dropping trou, before dropping a deuce on another man’s windshield is quite a crude thing to witness in a film, but I personally thought it was very tastefully done. And at least the guy had the decency to wash the windscreen afterwards by pissing all over it.

Honestly the whole 18 minute segment is perfect… It had everything! It even had a man being hit over the head with a fire extinguisher. Here’s a random bit of trivia for you: Wild Tales is just one of 68 titles on IMDB with the tag “Hit on the head with a fire extinguisher.” Annoyingly there isn’t an option to add all of these films to your watchlist simultaneously and adding 67 titles individually takes forever.

My least favourite was probably the wedding. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, it was just that it was the longest story for what I thought was the weakest payoff. Like I said, by no means a bad section of the film… I think I was perhaps slightly disappointed that it had more of a happy ending than I expected. Maybe that says more about me than about this story.

The entire cast was great, but I thought the actors who stood out the most were Ricardo Darín (who played the demolition expert) and Erica Rivas (who played the bride).

Wild tales was Filmed beautifully, with some really interesting camerawork which in certain shots reminded me of Breaking Bad. All of the stories were compelling and the acting was great and made each story relatable. Not that we would necessarily commit any of these acts, but in certain circumstances it might cross our minds. I can’t decide who I relate to more – the man who committed an act of domestic terrorism in response to a parking fine or the man who defecated on another man’s Audi in retaliation for being called a redneck. It’s easy to see why this film was nominated for best foreign language film at the Oscars.

4.5 out of 5