← Back to Reviews
in
Wild Tales, 2014
In this anthology film, we watch as people are pushed to extremes of behavior. This includes a waitress (Julieta Zylberberg) confronted with a menacing man from her past; two motorists (Leonardo Sbaraglia and Walter Donado) caught up in a violent, escalating feud; a man (Ricardo Darin) who has had enough with petty bureaucracy when his car is wrongfully towed; and a bride (Erica Rivas) who flips out when she discovers her fiance (Diego Gentile) has been unfaithful.
Strongest in its two bookends, this is an overall solid anthology with a great cast.
Oh, anthologies! So hard to get right! This film is on the IMDb top 250 and . . . okay. I think that this is a movie with two really strong entries and three pretty good ones.
The best, for me, were definitely the opening and closing segments. In the opening sequence, a woman boards an airplane and strikes up a conversation with the man across the aisle. The two of them get into a conversation that slowly involves other passengers in increasingly absurd ways. The humor and the eventual dark twist are perfectly executed.
The final sequence involves a bride discovering during her wedding that her new husband has been unfaithful and totally going off the rails. As her frenzy draws in her husband, their parents/relatives, and the other guests and hotel staff, what begins as a domestic tiff escalates to deliciously over the top violence and bloodshed. Rivas is fantastic as the wronged bride, and the various bloody setpieces are hilarious.
I was very mixed on the rest of the entries, which all seem to lack a little something. The second segment involves a waitress at a diner who confides in the cook that a customer is a man who ruined her family. When the cook (a wonderfully deadpan Rita Cortese) suggests adding a little something extra to the man’s food, it sets off a crisis of morality for the waitress. This is a segment that has a great premise, but ends with a shrug.
The third segment features dreamboat Leonardo Sbaraglia as a wealthy man who gets into an increasingly crude and dangerous showdown with another driver. In this segment it’s the story itself that doesn’t quite hit the right notes, while the ending is at least very funny.
The fourth segment follows demolitions expert---think that will be important?!--- Ricardo Darin as he grows more and more outraged with “the system” after his car is towed on his daughter’s birthday. This segment has solid performances and Darin’s character is an interesting mix of sympathetic and annoying as he attempts the fruitless quest of getting the government to refund the money he paid for his parking infraction. There’s an interesting idea here, as the character takes his anger out on the workers at the towing yard or the DMV, never actually addressing the people who control the policies but merely the ground-level workers who enforce them. Unfortunately, the segment takes the easy way out with an overly-cutesy ending.
The weakest segment is the fifth, in which a wealthy teenager mows down a pregnant woman with his car and then his family scrambles to find someone else to take the blame for it. While well acted and getting some dark humor from the business-like way in which various people are willing to negotiate the cover-up, it doesn’t really gel into anything particularly interesting or funny.
Great bookends, but on a rewatch I imagine I’d watch the first segment and then just fast-forward to the last one.
Wild Tales, 2014
In this anthology film, we watch as people are pushed to extremes of behavior. This includes a waitress (Julieta Zylberberg) confronted with a menacing man from her past; two motorists (Leonardo Sbaraglia and Walter Donado) caught up in a violent, escalating feud; a man (Ricardo Darin) who has had enough with petty bureaucracy when his car is wrongfully towed; and a bride (Erica Rivas) who flips out when she discovers her fiance (Diego Gentile) has been unfaithful.
Strongest in its two bookends, this is an overall solid anthology with a great cast.
Oh, anthologies! So hard to get right! This film is on the IMDb top 250 and . . . okay. I think that this is a movie with two really strong entries and three pretty good ones.
The best, for me, were definitely the opening and closing segments. In the opening sequence, a woman boards an airplane and strikes up a conversation with the man across the aisle. The two of them get into a conversation that slowly involves other passengers in increasingly absurd ways. The humor and the eventual dark twist are perfectly executed.
The final sequence involves a bride discovering during her wedding that her new husband has been unfaithful and totally going off the rails. As her frenzy draws in her husband, their parents/relatives, and the other guests and hotel staff, what begins as a domestic tiff escalates to deliciously over the top violence and bloodshed. Rivas is fantastic as the wronged bride, and the various bloody setpieces are hilarious.
I was very mixed on the rest of the entries, which all seem to lack a little something. The second segment involves a waitress at a diner who confides in the cook that a customer is a man who ruined her family. When the cook (a wonderfully deadpan Rita Cortese) suggests adding a little something extra to the man’s food, it sets off a crisis of morality for the waitress. This is a segment that has a great premise, but ends with a shrug.
The third segment features dreamboat Leonardo Sbaraglia as a wealthy man who gets into an increasingly crude and dangerous showdown with another driver. In this segment it’s the story itself that doesn’t quite hit the right notes, while the ending is at least very funny.
The fourth segment follows demolitions expert---think that will be important?!--- Ricardo Darin as he grows more and more outraged with “the system” after his car is towed on his daughter’s birthday. This segment has solid performances and Darin’s character is an interesting mix of sympathetic and annoying as he attempts the fruitless quest of getting the government to refund the money he paid for his parking infraction. There’s an interesting idea here, as the character takes his anger out on the workers at the towing yard or the DMV, never actually addressing the people who control the policies but merely the ground-level workers who enforce them. Unfortunately, the segment takes the easy way out with an overly-cutesy ending.
The weakest segment is the fifth, in which a wealthy teenager mows down a pregnant woman with his car and then his family scrambles to find someone else to take the blame for it. While well acted and getting some dark humor from the business-like way in which various people are willing to negotiate the cover-up, it doesn’t really gel into anything particularly interesting or funny.
Great bookends, but on a rewatch I imagine I’d watch the first segment and then just fast-forward to the last one.