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Relatos salvajes

The seldom-seen down-overhead storage shot.

It feels like it’s been weeks since I watched a movie, but it’s… only been four days? Huh. OK, last week was a busy week…

I like the colours here. They’re very un-2014 — not desaturated with touches of colour-graded hues poking through.

Oh! It’s an anthology film? But one director? Well, that’s fun, too.

The first bit was the most Spanish thing ever. But very short and efficient.

Yeah!

These are excellent questions.

The second bit was totally shocking because… there was no twist! I didn’t even know that was legal!

Oh my god. The third thing is the most excruciating thing ever.

But funny.

It’s a nightmare scenario, but both people involved are assholes, so…

So are all these stories about the same? About revenge? The airplane one was definitely about that… oh, and the restaurant one was about revenge. And I guess the car one, too? And this is about some asshole not wanting to pay a parking ticket (because it unfair)… are all the people here assholes? Hm… 1, yes. 2, no. 3 and 4: Yes. So I guess it’s not about toxic masculinity, but just revenge?

Well, if this one is going to be about revenge.

Yup.

Well, anger…

I’m not sure this movie quite works. I think we’re supposed to identify more with these characters, and it’s hard, because they’re all assholes. Even that woman in the second bit could have removed the rat poison food from that asshole eating it… I mean, just pretend stumble?

Is this just a didactic morality play film? “Never get angry?”

Man, I don’t want to do spoilers or anything, but the parking ticket guy turning into a folk hero (after getting his revenge) is possibly the lamest thing ever in the history of movies.

And are the tales getting longer and longer?

The fifth bit seems oddly complicated. There’s a bunch of asshole characters, and a fall guy… so is this bit going to be about somebody committing revenge on the fall guy? That’s not even ironic.

But worse, this bit is positively tedious — it’s taking so long to set up whatever’s gonna happen. The first four bits were efficient, at least.

Perhaps it’s the guy paying off all these people who’s going to get the revenge…

But it’s so boring that it’s hard to care.

Nice!

… oh! I guessed the revenge ending. SORRY Well, it was obvious, so.

That was absolutely dreadful. Well, not… totally. The scene the older guy discovered he was being scammed was great. But otherwise…

OK, the final bit is gonna be half an hour… I hope it’s better.

Yeah. It’s very much like reading a Spanish comics anthology from the 70s (after everybody had fled Argentine for Spain and worked there). The stories are bitter, sad, “ironic” one-liners. Which was understandable then, totally. This feels like a mostly annoying retread.

But it’s well shot, and the performances are really good. I mean, astoundingly so. So the director is obviously talented… and hasn’t done a single movie after this one. (But there’s a couple in production now, almost a decade later, according to imdb.)

Now that’s revenge!

This just isn’t that funny. It’s even more boring than the fifth bit.

It’s annoying that rottentomatoes doesn’t have a way to sort by rating, because this is 94% fresh and you have to wade through so many positive reviews to get to the good ones. I mean negative ones.

Man, that was a bad segment.

This movie started off strong, but every segment wasn’t quite as good as the preceding one, and we ended with segments that were (respectively) tedious and beyond tedious. So:

Wild Tales. Damián Szifron. 2014.

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