It’s a good thing that there’s a lot of other stuff going on because The Edinburgh Film Festival schedule was pretty thin pickings this year. Thursday was the first movie of our schlepp and to be honest I wish we hadn’t have bothered. Calvaire (The Ordeal) was as shite a film as I think I’ve ever seen. Here’s how the blurb went… "Deliverance meets The League of Gentlemen in this chiller from the Low Countries" that's France - Belgium - Luxembourg, "a deranged narrative that manages to be simultaneously horrific, disgusting, genuinely frightening and weirdly funny all at the same time". Bollocks.
It was disturbing alright and so were the audience that was in full “we’ll laugh at an egg boiling” mode. People would seem to be very easily pleased these days and I'll be damned if the guy in the movie didn't deserve what came to him. If he's made that ultimate sacrafice in those opening minutes then the ol' karma wouldn't have caught up with him. Plain as that. Implied bestiality and butthumping notwithstanding this is a dull, dull film. The locations and cinematography were good though. Pity about the stereotypical inbred "locals" that blotted the genuinely bleak landscape. I keep reading positive reviews of this clunker... what the hell is wrong with these people? I know. It must be me. This isn't entertainment. It's premeditated exploitation of the lowest order. And not in a good way.
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