Calvaire; The Ordeal

"Ah Belgium... Home of the weird, the sick and the sexually perverted!" -Coventry

The notorious bar dance scene.



Official trailer

Calvaire, a.k.a The Ordeal is mainly a Belgian production and – being a Belgian myself – I'm rather proud of that, although it also once again illustrates that the only cult and controversial horror films coming from this country pretty much all revolve on sexually perverted characters! Lucker served us the diary of a necrophiliac and the ultra-rare film Vase de Noces (which I haven't seen yet) handles about the sexual relationship between a farmer and his pig. At several points in the film, Calvaire hints at bestiality as well and the least you can say about all the characters, even the unimportant ones, is that they're heavily struggling with their hormones all together. The honest and hard-working singer Marc Stevens is on his way to a Christmas gig when his van breaks down on a rural road near a remote village. A loyal young man guides Marc to Paul Bartel's godforsaken hotel and that's where the madness really begins. Bartel is obtrusive and overly friendly at first but gradually his traumatized mind begins to mistake Marc for his own adulterous wife who left him. For Marc begins a nightmare in which he's dressed up in woman's clothes, tortured and forced to have sexual intercourse. Even when he manages to escape into the forests he isn't safe, as all the local rednecks are deranged deviants as well.

The subject matter of Calvaire sounds pretty devastating, but it actually comes across as a black comedy most of the time. It's an absurd film with disturbing undertones and grisly images, yet the surreal atmosphere and the overuse of stereotypes almost makes it a comical experience. You can summarize this film as being a demented and typically European interpretation of classic backwoods-thrillers such as Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The hillbillies are crazier, the situations are more grotesque and the perversion is a lot less subtle. Especially considering Calvaire was the debut project for most of the crew members involved, the film is exceptionally well-made! The cinematography is stunning to observe most of the time, with beautiful images of large and ominous forests, and the interior filming locations are dark & creepy. The acting performances are a bit weak sometimes but still endurable. Regretfully, the script also features a couple of tedious moments and it leaves quite a bit of questions unanswered when the film is finished. Nonetheless, Calvaire is destined to be a cult favorite in the near future (if it isn't one by now) already and fans of odd, offbeat cinema can't afford themselves to miss it! -imdb

Full length found on YouTube.


Calvaire @ IMDB
Fabrice Du Welz (director/co-writer) @ MySpace
Vincent Cahay (score) @ MySpace
Calvaire @ Amazon

Marebito (2004) aka The Stranger from Afar

In Tokyo, the freelancer cameraman Takuyoshi Masuoka is obsessed investigating the fear sensation near death. When he films a man stabbing himself in the eye in the access to the subway, he seeks what the suicidal might have seen to experiment the same sense of horror the man felt when he died. He finds a passage to the underground of Tokyo where he meets a mysterious chained woman that doesn't speak and calls her F. He brings her to his apartment and he has difficulties to feed her, until he discovers that she drinks blood. Masuika becomes a serial killer draining the blood of his victims to nurse F, completely out of touch with reality. imdb



One of the most thrilling films I've seen in a long time (Lynch excluded ofcourse, hors d' categorie), submerged in an atmosphere that is as close to the perfect symbioses of Eastern and Western cinema as one can get these days. The scenery and colour scheme used in the film are just astonishing, and create the perfect setting to drown in the reality of the main characters life... A most stunning accomplishment by director Takashi Shimizu when you know he only shot this in eight (!) days. Then again, Eastern filmmakers have proven that they don't need several months and a multimillion dollar budget to make a masterpiece (Wong Kar Wai is no stranger to this).


The main character, being a freelance cameraman, is equipped with some high tech stuff to keep an eye on his precious 'pet' which creates some rather interesting perspectives to the disposal of the director.
The implementation of hand-held cameras is not a new element in contemporary cinema, but the way that the writer Chiaki Konaka (novel and screenplay) sneaks in the use of mobile phones, surveillance equipment and so on is highly plausible and only contributes to the paranoid undertone of this feature. And, probably most important, creating some exhilarating possibilities in the storyline, something others failed to do before in this degree. On a scale of 0 to 10, I'd give it a whopping 9/10. I must admit I didn't get 'round to Takashi Shimizu's most known work, the Ju-on and their remakes, The Grudge series. I intend to do so one day, but for now I'll treasure this obscure beauty for what it is... one of my favourite Eastern flicks without Zhang Ziyi, kung fu or Wong Jar Wai being involved


Rated R for strong bloody violence and some nudity.

Premièred on May 22nd, 2004 at the Seattle International Film Festival and awarded with the Golden Raven at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film in 2005.


Trailer



Marebito at imdb
Takashi Shimizu at imdb
Chiaki Konaka at imdb
image source trailer source