WILD TALES

AKA Relatos Savajes

(Damián Szifrón, 2014)

A set of six short stories, each a pitch black comedy of violence or quiet horror, Wild Tales is a tremendously assured and confident film. It begins with the shortest tale, when a meet-cute on a Buenos Aires to Spain flight leads to a dawning realisation that every single person on board the plane is there because they know and have upset the same man. That ends with a big laugh, then the credits are droll too, and we already know we are in good hands.
Szifrón can do slick, he can do stylish, but his storytelling is economical and classical, and that is what really sells Wild Tales. Each story establishes itself with efficiency within a minute or so, and then each is gripping, funny, and wonderfully made. Best is probably the second, a story of road rage in the Argentine desert, which starts off with shades of Spielberg's Duel, but ends up in horrible if hysterical violence by way of the Road Runner. But the others are of similarly high quality: most notably the worst wedding party in history in the last tale and Ricardo Darin locked in a Kafka-esque battle with the bureaucracy of the parking ticket system in Buenos Aires in the third.
It never feels monotonous, either. If Szifrón reworks and revisits some overarching themes (these stories all turn on people trapped in one way or another, claustrophobia and revenge), then he always makes sure that each story has a radically different setting and visual scheme. The first takes place almost entirely within an airplane, the second in a roadside restaurant late at night, the third in the desert and two cars, the fourth all over the Argentinian capital (but mainly in it's bureaucratic offices and queues), the fifth inside the modern house of a seriously wealthy family and the last mainly inside the function room of a huge hotel. Each location is rendered with a great eye for detail and mood, which alters impeccably as these tales fade to black and and a new one begins.
The cast contains a few Argentine big-hitters (Leonardo Sbaraglia and Maria Onetto will be most recognisable to International audiences) but everyone is excellent, the photography is lovely, and Gustavo Santaolalla seems to be channelling 1980s Ennio Morricone for his score.

WHITE ELEPHANT

(Pablo Trapero, 2012)

Pablo Trapero has grown more assured and dextrous as a storyteller with each successive film. And yet, as his films have become increasingly ambitious and confident, it seems he receives less and less attention outside his native Argentina. His early status as a wunderkind of the New Argentine cinema was founded on the gritty, low budget social realism of films like Crane World and El Bonaerense. Critics, in particular, like their social realism gritty and low budget. Trapero still makes social realist cinema; its just that these days his budgets are bigger, and his craftsmanship means that he can stretch the money further than most. White Elephant, for instance, is a slick, beautiful, dazzlingly made drama of life in a Buenos Aires slum as seen through the eyes of a couple of Priests. That those priests are played by International arthouse stars Ricardo Darin (as Father Julian, the Parish Priest for the slum) and Jeremie Renier (as a Belgian traumatised by an incident of murder in the Amazon we glimpse in an elliptical opening scene) is another difference with Trapero's early work, where unknowns in major roles added a seeming level of authenticity.
Both Renier and Darin are terrific here - even if the latter is somewhat underused - as is Trapero's wife and muse Martina Gusman as a social worker with whom Renier's priest falls in love. But the most impressive aspect of the film is its casually epic look at the daily life of this barrio, built as it is around the immense skeleton of an abandoned and unfinished hospital building and constructed mainly of shacks made of cinderblocks, plywood and corrugated metal. Drug gangs engage in open armed warfare in the underlit alleyways by night, but in the daytime the place seems to hum with companionable affection and happy, social humanity.
The priests say mass, baptise children, give last rites to gangsters, help out addicts, give out food and try to organise the construction of some better housing, all the while dealing with Church politics and their own demons. Trapero shoots much of this on location in sinuous, breathtakingly long takes, his camera following these characters as they walk the streets and pathways, peaking in an incredible sequence when Renier's priest visits the lair of a Druglord and passes through level after level of security , past wounded henchmen and drug factories, the camera following him every step of the way. This material is fascinating, moving and at times extremely gripping, depicting a world I had never seen before with warmth, humour and empathy.
Trapero is great at unblinking realism, but since the excellent Born And Bred in 2007 his films have been increasingly good at capturing the (often existential) angst and suffering of his lost characters, and White Elephant is no different.
Both Renier, with his crippling survivors guilt and his feelings for Gusman's character, and Darin's struggles with his own anger and mortality are given poetic expression by Trapero's camera and the impressive actors. Nothing is ever made too obvious or too overt, the storytelling is often entirely wordless; and yet, we never doubt what is happening or how these characters are feeling.

CARANCHO

(Pablo Trapero, 2010)

Within its first two minutes, Carancho establishes itself as a great film of the City. Buenos Aires, in this case (San Justo, more specifically), captured by Trapero, using a RED camera, in crisp images of neon-lit streets and grimy alleyways, dustily vacant lots and crumbling public buildings. Visually, this is a vivid, stunning portrayal of a crowded, chaotic megapolis by night, when it can seem lonely and beautifully desolate.
The noirish narrative and characterisation just underline this. Tracing the growing relationship between a Emergency Doctor and an Ambulance-chasing lawyer and set against the backdrop of a City with horrific road death figures, Trapero's film presents a grimy, morally compromised world where the vulnerable and innocent are preyed upon by companies bent on Insurance scams and massive profits. The lovers we follow are only slightly less tainted than everybody else: he arranges accidents for insurance pay-offs and haunts waiting rooms in search of fresh meat. She writes prescriptions for herself and shoots up into her feet.
Trapero gives their characters time and space and that - together with terrific performances from Ricardo Darin and Martina Gusman - makes their halting love story believable and affecting, and gives the danger they find themselves mired in during the last act real charge.
It is Trapero's most conventional film - you can imagine exactly how a U.S. remake might look - with its action scenes and plot reversals, but he directs it with energy, invention and a seriously great eye. His actors give it a soulful, bruised quality absent in much modern Noir.
Darin is one of the World's great film stars and Trapero's camera lingers upon Gusman's distinctive beauty (she is his wife) throughout, and the two have impressive chemistry. The supporting cast and astute use of pop and rock on the soundtrack emphasise the impression of Carancho being a class act.
In the finest Noir tradition, it contains an absolute gut punch of an ending.