“Que te paso?” asked people to each other.
A model talked to a music critic in a flight; it turned out that they both had a mutual acquaintance. However, they’re not the only one; as people in the same flight started to reveal the fact that they also knew that guy to talk about. When they realized what happened, we also realize that Wild Tales (a.k.a Relatos salvajes) was never a normal film—this Academy Award nominee is not just a six-film anthology, it’s a sick-film anthology.
Written and directed solely by Damián Szifrón, Wild Tales is an overloaded portmanteau of six pitch-black comedies chained only by the same motif—revenge. Yet, revenge was not the main dish. All the short films in this anthology were an epiphany of poignant satire towards the country, Argentine, seen from social, cultural, and political aspects and the revenge stories were the fancy package of it.
The tales of revenge were crafted well in ideas and structures. In one segment, Bombita—one of my favorites, there’s a conversation about the country being ruled by a fascist regime as the speaker concluded it with a line, “You won’t stop until a tragedy occurs.” That line always resounds in my brain when I think of this film; the idea was dramatizing some ‘tragedies’ which was caused by acknowledged flaws in the country’s social-cultural-political system. Whether the issues are about family, election, social gap, law enforcement, money politic, or marriage, Szifrón always found a crack to muss.
These sick tales revealed the blurred lines between being civilized and being uncivilized in a brutal way. Packed with astonishing cinematography, the terror became vividly traumatizing. Once it’s done, it feels like it was so brutal, so wicked that it was hilarious.
VERDICT: Wild Tales is a sick six-film anthology of revenge and desperation that makes a poignant satire towards a country’s social, cultural, and political system in such a brutal way that it feels hilarious.
Wild Tales (2014)
a.k.a Relatos salvajes
Comedy, Drama, Thriller Written & Directed by: Damián Szifrón Starred by: Oscar Martínez, Ricardo Darín, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Érica Rivas, Julieta Zylberberg, Darío Grandinetti Running Time: 122 mins Rated R for violence, language and brief sexuality
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