 Cannibal is not the kind of gruesome exploitation film you might expect, nor is it the kind of intense character-study you might hope for. It’s something of a sly variation on the Jekyll and Hyde tale. The title character (played impassively by Antonio De La Torre) is a demented dandy: a tailor by day, a killer and cannibal by night. The director veers away from explaining his character in psychological terms or hardly any terms at all, which means we’re spared the heavy-handed ending of Hitchcock’s Psycho but left with a character who’s quite simply an enigma. This creepy fop listlessly cuts fabric, drinks wine, and eats women—his hands both a curse and blessing. To the director’s credit, most of the film is a remarkable example of pure cinema. The picture is directed in the stark, atmospheric tradition of Jean-Pierre Melville: wind, rain, and silence pervade the film, communicating more than the spare, almost unnecessary dialogue. The film’s highlights are two eerily quiet sequences that seem to have floated right out of Zodiac in somewhat mutated states: one occurs on a darkened stretch of highway and the other on a beach. Throughout the picture, the framing is impressively sly and the elliptical editing keeps us guessing until, finally, a downbeat dénouement that brings to my mind both Wages of Fear and Jules and Jim in different, twisted ways. |  MSPIFF Saturday, April 5, 9:50pm Monday, April 14, 9:45pm Director: Manuel Martín Cuenca Producers: Fernando Bovaira, Rafael de la Uz, Simón de Santiago, Tudor Giurgiu, Alejandro Hernández, Manuel Martín Cuenca, Sergey Selyanov, François Yon Writers: Alejandro Hernández, Rafael de la Uz, Humberto Areal (novel) Cinematographer: Pau Esteve Birba Editor: Ángel Hernández Zoido Cast: Antonio de la Torre, Olimpia Melinte, Delphine Tempels, Manuel Solo Runtime: 116m. Genre: Thriller Countries: Spain/Romania/Russia/France Premiere: September 6, 2013 – Toronto International Film Festival US Distributor: Film Movement |
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