Monday, August 27, 2012

BEAST (2011) movie review

Beast (2011) d. Boe, Cristoffer (Denmark)

A rough, raw and mystifying dissection of a crumbling marriage, but this is one domestic drama you’re not likely to see on the Lifetime channel. Scraping the same gut-level, non-realistic emotional scar-tissue terrain as Cronenberg’s The Brood or closer yet, Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, the ferocity between former soul mates Nicolas Bro and Marijana Jankovic is so visceral it cannot be contained by a conventional narrative. Instead, it operates on a metaphorical level, depicting body-horror events (which may or may not be happening) that leave viewers reeling in disorientation and fascinated revulsion. It’s an incredible high-wire collaboration between writer/director Cristoffer Boe and his three leads (Nikolaj Lie Kaas is equally effective as Jankovic’s adulterous partner) – the onscreen events are defiantly ambiguous and non-realistic, but they perfectly nail the off-balance feeling of a once raging love now cooled. Recommended.

1 comment:

  1. Solid take on a solid movie. Not sure if you've caught any of Boe's other films, but they're just as good. Heady stuff. A serious back to back would be his film 'Offscreen' and the shocking 'The Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez'.

    The Boe and Bro tandem seems to be fool-proof.

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