Cannibal

Jul 25 - Jul 31, 2014

(Manuel Martín Cuenca, Spain, 2013, DCP, 116 min)

Carlos is a catch. Handsome, well-coiffed, chivalrous and the best tailor in Granada, he also has a proclivity for murdering and eating women. As Joe E. Lewis once said: “nobody’s perfect.”

A far cry from the recent Hollywood onslaught of glamorized serial killer tales and torture porn, Cannibal deploys artful restraint in an examination of the limits of love and forgiveness in restless times. Part noir and part horror, this troubling character study lingers all the longer by intimating rather than reveling in violence. Like its influences, Hitchcockian thrillers Vertigo and Psycho, its interest is in probing society’s most deeply embedded evils, and the horror of character rather than the misogynist mayhem of Eli Roth and his ilk.

A glimmer of redemption and even love appears in the film, in the form of Nina (Olimpia Melinte, luminous in the Kim Novak dual role). Antonio de la Torre was nominate for a Goya (Spanish Oscar) for his magnetic performance as Carlos.

 

"Cuenca's control as a filmmaker turns Cannibal into a thoroughly engrossing experience" —The Seattle Weekly

"short on grisly detail and long on contemplative atmosphere" —The Stranger

"Unhurried in its pacing, exquisitely photographed and very sparing in its presentation of bloodshed" —The Seattle Times

 

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