Wild Tales [2014]

Like Jia Zhangke’s masterful hyperlink film A Touch of Sin, Wild Tales is that rare anthology film where every segment packed as much punch as the other, and rarer still given that all the episodes have been directed by the same filmmaker. This lacerating satire, set in contemporary urban Argentinian milieu, provided a brutal, pungent, wickedly funny and powerful critique on the discomfiting ironies, hypocrisies, self-centeredness, corruption and destructiveness amongst human populace, with revenge being the connecting motif. The film comprises of 6 terrific shorts of varying lengths each of which could have been elongated to feature lengths – in ‘Pasternak’, the shortest of the lot that superbly set the tone, passengers aboard a doomed plane discover a carefully orchestrated link between themselves; in ‘The Rats’, the waitress at a diner discover the chance to get even with a brutish politician thanks to a sociopathic cook; in ‘The Strongest’, a vicious segment reminiscent of Duel, two men driving cars on a highway go to ludicrous lengths for the sake of one-upmanship; in ‘Little Bomb’, reminiscent of Falling Down, a demolitions expert reaches a state of breaking point when his car keeps getting towed away for no fault of his; in ‘The Proposal’, a wealthy business man, on his sleazy lawyer’s advice, devises ways for saving his son who has accidentally killed a pregnant lady while driving; and in the Felliniesque ‘Until Death Do Us Part’, a boisterous wedding party turns rather ugly for all concerned. The film’s Kafkaesque, jet-black humour, along with the increasingly farcical and unexpected turns that the tales take, brilliantly counterpointed and mercilessly projected its bleak and cynical social commentary, and in turn constructed a fabulous microcosm of our society.

Director: Damian Szifron
Genre: Black Comedy/Social Satire/Anthology Film
Language: Spanish
Country: Argentina