What does it take to start a controversy in Cannes? Do you need to show real sex? Will a hand job do it, or does it have to be a blow job? Does the penis necessarily *have* to ejaculate blood? What about self-mutilation? If it’s not of the sexual variety, does it go far enough? How about the disemboweling of animals — is the sight of exposed guts always shocking, or only when the guts belong to a wild beast?
I saw two films in two days literally dripping with graphic sexuality, violence, and the apparent philosophy that explicit depravity is the only way for the filmmaker to get their point across — if either filmmaker even has a point beyond inviting dismay, which has been debated –– and yet only Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is attracting scandal. With its depiction of forced incest, two explicitly not-fake images of sex acts, liberation via very bloody self-harm and the on-screen disemboweling of a housecat, Greek Un Certain Regard title Dogtooth should by all rights be giving Antichrist’s raspberry to art film seriousness a run for its money –– and maybe it would be, if anyone was paying attention.
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In its depiction of mid-80s Eastern European Communist social hell, Cargo 200 makes 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days look like Sesame Street. There are plenty of films that use real history as the jumping off point for genre fantasy (and even a couple of others at this festival), but Aleksei Balabanov’s brutal, fetid vision of personal sadism and political policy intermingled is the only work of serious, modern social criticism in recent memory that actually made me want to puke. This is a compliment of the highest order.
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