THE HUNGER WAVE
Spanish thriller “Cannibal” is a seductive dark tale about a tailor hungry for beautiful women, literally. Antonio de la Torre plays the title role with a hauntingly elegance, building an intriguing and mysterious figure. He develops an intense relationship with a Russian visitor who’s trying to figure out her sister’s disappearance. Director Manuel Martín Cuenca shows a sophisticated taste for stylized gothic atmosphere, creating a suffocating anxiety with somber shots that resembles tones of expressionism. This aspect is also punctuated throughout the unpredictable narrative, giving the chills of his next move. In “Flesh of My Flesh”, French director Denis Dercourt depicts some similar instincts on the persona of a beautiful blonde Austrian immigrant, who kills and chops up the men she dates. Since the opening of the film, we learn she’s being treated at a facility while listens to her psychiatrist discusses her unusual case. Constructed as a dreamlike ambience, the film goes back in time, mixing reality, imagination and loose memories of her own, with an enlightening and sensuous cinematography that brings a sort of settlement for the disturbing situation, and also reflecting on the sense of unconsciousness of the leading woman.
Anna Juliana Jaenner, in her screen debut, gives an enigmatic performance as the young femme fatale, while director Dercourt proves enormous talent with the material which he also wrote, sound recorded, shot and edited. Also of interest is Marvin Kren’s “Blood Glacier”, shot on the breathtaking landscapes of the German Alps, where a group of scientists find a mysterious substance leaking from a glacier that can infect and transform its hosts into hungry-for-blood creatures. It’s a scary and sometimes funny sci-fi horror that uses the Global Warming issue as a part of its plot with incredibly stylized techniques. And in the Iranian political satire “Fat Shaker”, members of a family face the challenges imposed by manipulative authorities, while dealing with their own aspirations and fears. They are led by the patriarch who’s a con using his deaf-mute son as a bait to extort money from women. It’s a very strange film but also mysteriously mesmerizing. (All films are part of “Film Comment Selects 2014” running thru February 27th at Film Society of Lincoln Center, 165 West 65th Street, Broadway, Manhattan. Some directors will be in attendance for a Q&A. Visit www.filmlinc.com for details and schedule)
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