Aaltra

Belgian comedians Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine wrote, directed, and star in this wonderfully perverse dark comedy about two rural neighbors, a commuting office worker (Kervern) and a lazy farmer (Delépine), whose mutual antagonism eventually boils into a fistfight on the latter's tractor. During the altercation, the tractor malfunctions and severely injures the men, who awake in a shared hospital room, both paralyzed from the waist down, after which they leave together and head to Finland to sue the tractor manufacturer. Aaltra can be considered a subversive parody of The Straight Story, only with wheelchairs driven by unapologetically embittered travelers who are joined solely by a common fury at both their perceived foe in Scandinavia and the various idiots who disrupt their long journey. The crisp black-and-white cinematography beautifully mirrors the film's absence of sentiment and schmaltz, and Kevern and Delépine are ideal as the hideously mismatched traveling companions. Aaltra's take on the subject of having a handicap is all in bad taste and might be too much for some viewers, but rarely has bad taste been so much consistently snarky fun. Highly recommended. (P. Hall)