Carnage

In her compelling debut feature, Delphine Gleize achieves a mastery of the visual, the metaphoric, and the dramatic reached by few other contemporary veteran filmmakers. An expansive story about the whole shebang--life, death, sex, babies, food, and dogs; i.e., all the really important things--Carnage utilizes one of the most unusual linking devices in recent cinematic history: after a Spanish toreador is wounded and put into a coma, the bull is killed and dismembered, and its parts end up--eyeballs to a researcher, sirloin in a dish, a dog bone, etc.--with a circle of far-flung characters. A schoolteacher, a schoolgirl, an aspiring actress, an elderly woman and her odd middle-aged son, a pregnant woman and her philandering scientist husband...all ordinary people just trying to figure out this messy complicated business called life. The hidden coincidences that join them--the mundane stuff of everyday life: wrong numbers on the phone, missing childhood drawings, supermarket parking lot fender benders--are revealed to be not so much speed bumps on life's road as the very essence of living itself. Unexpectedly funny, warm, and deeply human, this is highly recommended. [Note: DVD extras include two short films by director Delphine Gleize--“Dirtie Bastardz” and “A Castle in Spain”--cast and crew filmographies, trailers, and weblinks. Bottom line: a small extras package for a small but winning film.] (M. Johanson)