Foreign Films #1

Raw (France)

Julia Ducournau's stylistic, bold feature is a thrilling piece of psycho-body horror. Cannibalism puts a lot of people off, but by keeping an open mind, you empathize for whatever a person's identity may be. Justine succumbs to her desire for human flesh and so to her true self. The temptation is inevitable, it's how she must manage that matters. Her older sister is enrolled at a veterinary college with grotesque hazing rituals involving blood and guts. Medical schools may benefit from such immersion therapy.  Atmospheric of a boarding school, there is easy tension in the close quarters between the characters. Bullied into lapsing from her life-long vegetarianism, Justine is exposed to animal flesh. The temptations that follow and the guilt and the withdrawal are brilliantly visualized. It's like she's been anemic her entire life and now her soul is finally being perfused. I find myself thinking back frequently to this movie since I've seen it. Challenge your moral hangups! 

Yeah she's a cannibal, don't worry about it

The Salesman (Iran)

Asghar Farhadi's follow-up to A Separation is as morally challenging as they get. Two married actors in a theater company (another area rife for drama, something I've been witness to), are putting on a Farsi production of Death of a Salesman. We see snippets of the show throughout, a fantastic use of a story within a story. The couple are subject to a home invasion, when only the wife is home. At the hospital, the wife is amnesic to the trauma and the husband shaken and determined to find the culprit. Clues to the previous occupant of their apartements and items left behind propel the man to find his villain. However, the woman's reaction to events is much more nuanced. The real story is how the men in her life react to her. It's painful and utterly realistic to see people misunderstand another person's emotions and the misogynistic ideas men propagate. Even the cutest 4 year old had learned biases against women. The story builds, people collide, and every twist a knife to the gut. Savage ending too. Harder to watch than the movie about canniblism, to be honest.

PSA - Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - a story about a Persian skateboarding vampire chick who eats men) has a new movie coming out!