An allegory of good, evil, and passivity set in the capitalist world of post-Soviet Estonia, The Temptation of St. Tony is an example of Eastern European art cinema: nightmarish and darkly satirical. Tony (Taavi Eelmaa) is a well-heeled middle manager in a culture of grim absurdities—a smartly dressed, blank-faced clown in a black-and-white world of desolate landscapes and crumbling Soviet-era buildings. Tony lives in an incongruously modern home and is more concerned with his sports car than his nameless cheating wife (Tiina Tauraite). Becoming smitten with Nadezhda (Ravshana Kurkova), a beautiful young brunette on the run from the cops, Tony follows her to a decadent nightclub where the entertainment is perverse (picture a Fellini circus of indulgences by way of the deadpan doom of Aki Kaurismäki in the context of the ashes of Soviet communism). Seen through filmmaker Veiko Õunpuu's lens, big business is both nonsensical and ruthlessly inhuman, while the social decadence of the rich veers into surreal dimensions (including cannibalism). A handsome film with eerie imagery, The Temptation of St. Tony is both provocative and morbidly funny. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)
The Temptation of St. Tony
Olive, 110 min., in Estonian, Russian, English & French w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $29.95 Volume 26, Issue 3
The Temptation of St. Tony
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