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Calvaire [2004] This black comic horror harps yet again on the wretched depravities of the backwoods and plays a few too many Collector-Misery abduction games, but has a distinctive Franco-Belgian locale and an unusual, passive object of desire for a protagonist. Crooner Marc Stevens [Laurent Lucas] appeals to senior fans with his stage cape, direct romantic songs and air of reticence. When he appears at an old people's home, his message is taken so much to heart that he has to rebuff passes from both a septuagenarian and a lonely nurse [Brigitte Lahaie]. While driving to his next gig, Marc is sidetracked in the middle of nowhere when his van breaks down. A local loon [Jean-Luc Couchard] fruitlessly searching the woods for a lost dog called Bella [one of several absent females in the film] directs Marc to an inhospitable inn operated by whiskery old eccentric nudgingly named Paul Bartel [Jackie Berroyer]. The sense that something is off about the host becomes more acute as Bartel creepily tries to bond with Marc by revealing that he used to be a performer too, a stand-up comic. Bartel has been unable to be funny since his singer wife Gloria ran off - a shortcoming he demonstrates in a weirdly misstold shaggy dog story about footballing dwarves that he exchanges with Marc for a song that moves him to tears and cracks him completely. Making calls to a mechanic on a disconnected phone and further sabotaging the van, Bartel traps Marc at the inn, convinced he is Gloria returned, tying him up, brutally cutting his hair and dressing him in his wife's clothes. The film slips into a rut with the expected near-escapes and abuses as abductor and abducted enter a semi-masochist bond - but takes a wilder turn when word gets out that Gloria is back and another local madman [Philippe Nahon], once the woman's lover, decides he should have Marc himself. There's an extraordinary scene involving the all-male clientele of
a local bar doing a strange penguin dance before forming a lynch mob,
and the film erupts into an orgy of buggery, shotgun blasts, calf-abduction,
messy violence and insanity observed from above in a showpiece single
shot. There's a modest character arc as Marc shows some sympathy for
a tormentor drowning in a swamp, in contrast with the coldness he originally
showed for fans sucked in by his reportedly devastating [but actually
rather thin] act. Lucas, long-faced and glum, is an interestingly withdrawn
hero, a blank upon which others project their fantasies, but also an
anchor for far more extreme performances - Berroyer is terrific as the
self-deluded, sham-jovial inn-keeper comedian, given to axe-hacking
little spells of whiny frustration whenever thwarted and sly moments
of cunning as he ensnares his prey. The supporting maniacs are a well-choreographed
mob who seem to grow out of the desolate, weather-blighted countryside.
Directed by Fabrice Du Welz, who co-scripted with Romain Protat. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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