It only takes a single head-on collision of the mainstream and the arthouse to remind you how false that dichotomy really is. When Simon Cowell gave a surprise shout-out to Harmony Korine’s 1997 avant garde classic Gummo on a movie-themed episode of Britain’s Got Talent a few years back, I was left wondering why I’d chosen to compartmentalise my appreciation for the two. Likewise, there was something perversely pleasurable in seeing the Argentinian anthology film Wild Tales secure a sizeable feature on chest-obsessed whingesite Mail Online back in March, albeit under the headline: “Outrage over the release of Oscar-nominated movie showing member of aircrew locking himself in cockpit to crash a plane and kill everyone on board”.
The similarities between the scene in question and the tragedy aboard Germanwings Flight 9525 are, of course, accidental, but you suspect its makers wouldn’t be entirely displeased with the film getting a mention (of any sort) on a website with 14 million daily unique users. Wild Tales works as well as it does – which, for the record, is quite well – because director Damián Szifron makes no attempt to separate his populist instincts from his intellectual ones. Instead, he unites brows both high and low with the efficiency of a family head-butting competition, filling each of the film’s audacious tales of revenge with ludicrous stake-raising contrivances, then shooting them like high-end Scandi crime thrillers.
Produced by Pedro Almodóvar (who’s done as much as anyone to reject the presumed modesty of arthouse film-making) Wild Tales is a decidedly easy watch, as accessible as any of this summer’s more visible mainstream offerings. Yet thanks to its arthouse credentials – and its temerity to speak a language other than English – it will likely be relegated to the “world cinema” catalogues of every DVD retailer this side of Buenos Aires, alongside a thousand broad French farces mislabelled as sophisticated art films.
Also out this week
Selma Acclaimed MLK biopic minus the copyrighted speeches.
Taken 3 Neeson’s weariest hardman performance to date.
Gascoigne Geordie footballing legend talks Moat and more.
