Wild Tales: Movie Review

A model walks onto a plane. A music critic seated across the aisle starts talking to her. It turns out he wrote a scathing review of music written by her ex-boyfriend. It turns out her ex-boyfriend's hated former teacher is on the plane. And so is one of his former friends. And also a different friend, who the model cheated on him with. The plane is not going to land peacefully. Guess who is flying the plane?

So begins Wild Tales, Argentina's nominee for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars. It is a series of vignettes about revenge, ranging from run-of-the-mill homicide to cheating on your wedding day. If revenge is a dish best served cold, Wild Tales presents it as a terrible dish served hot out of the oven.

Don't let the dark subject matter fool you: Director Damián Szifron mines the humor out of all six stories. He captures the Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner vibe of a road-raging douchebag and a crude redneck locked in an increasingly violent bout on a lonely highway. He finds the smirk in a chef nonchalantly suggesting a waitress slip rat poison into a patron's food. Szifron even squeezes a few laughs out a millionaire's attempts to buy his drunk-driving son's way out of prison after he kills a pregnant woman.

Wild Tales' mix of humor and darkness works because every situation escalates too quickly for the gravity to register. In "El más fuerte," Diego, frustrated at a slow motorist, calls him a "fucking redneck." Diego blows out a tire. The redneck stops by and takes a literal shit on Diego's car. Diego runs the redneck's truck off the road. Before long the redneck chokes Diego with a seatbelt while Diego bashes the redneck's head with a fire extinguisher.

With six stories with different characters, set in six different places, unified by violence and black comedy, it feels like a series of live-action cartoons. Wild Tales even has an Aesopian moral: Sometimes it's better to just let things go. Maybe fighting an unjust parking ticket isn't worth missing your daughter's birthday party, you know? Maybe throwing your husband's mistress into a mirror isn't the best thing to do at your wedding reception. 

Critic's Grade: B+

SEE IT: Wild Tales is rated R. It opens at Friday at Cinema 21.

WWeek 2015