Director: Damian Szifron
Starring: Ricardo Darin, Oscar Martinez, Walter Donado, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Erica Rivas, Rita Cortese, Julieta Zylberberg, and Dario Grandinetti
Distributor: Warner Brothers
Runtime: 122 mins. Reviewed in May 2015

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Rating notes: Strong violence

This Argentinean-Spanish black comedy is composed of six stand-alone segments, that are integrated by the theme of vengeance. The film won the Goya Award for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film in 2015, and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 2015 Academy Awards. It is co-produced by Pedro Almodovar.

It offers subversive satire that packs an extraordinary punch. Each segment shows someone behaving badly. The motivation being expressed in all of them is vengeance which is associated with violence, and each story is directed darkly.

Elaboration of just one segment in the film captures the spirit of the whole.

The third segment of the film is about road rage. Two men are driving along a lonely highway. Mario (Walter Donado) is driving an old, battered vehicle, and the other man, Diego (Leonardo Sbaraglia) is driving a smart, expensive car. Diego insults Mario as he passes him on the road, and Mario smashes the window screen on Diego’s car, while Diego is trying to fix a flat tyre further up the highway. Vengefully, Diego pushes Mario’s car (with Mario in it) into the river, after which Mario sets Diego’s gas tank on fire. The police arrive to find two charred bodies, locked into what seems to be an embrace. They conclude mistakenly that they have come upon a “crime of passion” involving two men who have tragically loved each other too much.

There is no episode that doesn’t have a surprise twist or two like this, and one in particular has disturbing contemporary relevance. That episode shows a plane loaded with passengers, who are disliked by a failed musician for one reason or another. The aggrieved man locks himself into the cockpit and crashes the plane intentionally into his parent’s house, killing everyone on board. The story reveals the reasons why the passengers have caused offence and they are told humorously. Other segments feature the corrupt practices of a car-towing firm in Buenos Aires, and infidelity perceived by the bride at a wedding reception, who takes revenge on the man she has just married.

The film is full of stressed people, whose behaviour illustrates their reaction to injustice, inequality, corruption, or the awful behaviour of other human beings. The film tells us that a thin line sometimes separates civilised behaviour from acts of madness that express resentment and outrage, and the movie makes its point by crossing over that line in almost every episode, and it does so unpredictably. In one segment, bureaucracy that is unfair, for instance, is unexpectedly dealt a deadly blow in a manner that makes it very difficult for the viewer not to raise a knowing smile at what could happen when officialdom is practiced vindictively.

This is a serious comic movie that is highly imaginative in its story-telling. Across all episodes, the film’s director (Damian Szifron) has managed to express a vision that supplies cohesion to the movie as a whole. All the segments, which are untitled on the screen, are united by black humour or social comment linked to corruption, and they have a distinctive visual style.

This is not a film that explores the goodness in people in any way. The humour in this movie is keenly observed but outrageous, and it draws its impact from totally immoral actions. It concentrates on people who behave appallingly, but at no time does it reinforce their immorality. Rather, bad behaviour is used to show the limits of endurance about felt injustices, that in turn provide the viewer with serious social comment. All but one of the segments takes negative human emotions and extracts comedy from unacceptable behaviour, and the film as a whole presents a mixture of revenge and aggression that works to provide biting social comment on Argentinean society.

This is an allegorical film that cleverly expresses human anger or outrage at unfair treatment. Its scenes are absurdly unreal and tragically ridiculous. The Director of the movie, Damian Szifron, explains what he wishes to communicate when he says that each of his stories is about “vengeance and destruction…and the undeniable pleasure of losing control”. This is not a movie that will be to everyone’s taste, but it is a movie that is particularly well-crafted, acted and directed, and it realises the Director’s declared intent in a highly original way.