Les Nouveaux Sauvages

Greetings again from the darkness. Do you often get accused of having a slightly demented sense of humor? Do you have secret crazy thoughts of seeking revenge on those who have wronged you? If so, writer/director Damian Szifron has a collection of short stories just for you!

Nominated for Best Foreign Language Oscar, Argentina's entry is just now opening in the Dallas market where I live. To say Wild Tales is a wild ride would be quite an understatement. There are six short stories blended together, and while you may not recognize the theme immediately, it doesn't take long before rage and retribution jump to the forefront in these seemingly typical slices of everyday life.

The best short stories make a quick grab for attention, and manage to convey character and setting from the beginning. The writing is crucial and can easily collapse in the hands of a less-proficient short story writer. But when it works, it's fascinating to watch, and Mr. Szifron has a real talent for making us laugh in the midst of truly awful situations.

Not to give away any details, but the six stories involve: a remarkable "coincidence" on a flight, an unwelcome customer at a local diner, a close-quarters brawl at a bridge, the frustration of dealing with "the system", misguided parental instincts in protecting their kid, and the most wheels-off wedding reception ever filmed.

If you are ever searching for an example of a dark comedy, this one will provide clarity. The seemingly unrelated stories are woven together through payback, though the price is often pretty high. Mr. Szifron's stories remind us that life is not fair, but when it's happening to someone else, we can still laugh about it.

Watched last night at the theater with my girlfriend.

It's a compilations of 6 tales, but they don't have the same type of lenght, humor or darkness. Each one is unique.

1) Airplane tale: fantastic, hilarating and surrealistic story to open the series.

2) Coffee shop tale: shorter, but dark and makes you wonder what's "freedom" for some people.

3) Road tale: excellent. A really LOT of violence and a little bit of humor makes this one of the best tales in the movie.

4) Human limit tale: a man that's having a couple of really bad days explode when he runs out of patiente. Great acting.

5) Accident tale: 90% darkness. And the fact that could be a very possible story makes it even darker. Shocking finale.

6) Wedding tale: almost impossible to qualify. Hilarious for the most part, but at the end, it will make you wonder to whom you are spending your whole life with.

Seeing this compilation in a theater for the price of one, its a damn good deal if you ask me.

Go watch it.

Hopefully Damián Szifron is on his way to Hollywood. Simply the most refreshing and entertaining film that I've been lucky enough to watch since Nightcrawler...really it's that good. The darkest comedy you'll have the pleasure to experience. Ticks all the boxes, cinematic, a superb ensemble cast deliver in every short story, dead pan humour, intelligent, thought provoking, terrifyingly realistic, wonderful camera-work especially in the final story, with a couple of explosions and some (thankfully) subtle CGI thrown in to complete this masterpiece. Lovely to once again sit amid an audience all happily laughing out loud, without the need to lower itself to racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic humour, though the scatological humour is surprisingly perfectly appropriate and carefully framed to make the point without unnecessary vulgarity. Ten out of Ten. A new name to watch. Kudos to Damián Szifron.

Perhaps the best omnibus dark comedy ever made. This movie is funny, it explores some of the darker parts of humanity but it does so with so much wit and intelligence. It was a great hit in South America, and understandably so. Despite dark and cynical take on the human condition, the movie is lighthearted and highly watchable, and uncompromisingly original.

This is a very watchable and often extremely funny anthology of six short films. The dialogue is in Spanish, the director and settings are Argentine. The stories are all slightly-over-the-top-realism in the manner of Almodóvar tinged with the dark surrealism of the Buñuel of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The scenarios are graphic rather than subtle, but they all work well most of the time, because most of us can identify with the main characters, recognizing how little it can take to shake us from complacency into violence.

The official English title "Wild Tales" suggests madcap craziness. But these tales are savage ("selvaje" in the original Spanish), a word that better suggests the ferocious beast lurking not far under the skin of all of us. The beast can be unchained by nothing more complicated than being cut off by a driver who doesn't signal or finding that our car has been impounded for an unwitting parking infraction.

In the first and shortest episode, what appears to be an absurd series of coincidences linking all the passengers on a plane turns out to have a logical and sinister rationale. The ending explains why in the opening scene the woman checking in at the airport is told that she will not earn frequent flyer points for her trip! And the final, longest episode hilariously tracks the chaotic degeneration of a stereotypical Jewish wedding party, initiated by the bride's discovery that the groom has been cheating on her with one of the guests. This is not a film for young children or for people who aren't willing to admit how close they sometimes are to dissolving in animal rage.