Wild Tales

You’re on a plane. Minding your own business, flipping through a magazine. A man sitting next to you strikes up a conversation. You make idle talk – “Business or pleasure?” – those sorts of things. He tells you what he does for a living, and through this bit of information, you both soon realize that you have an acquaintance in common. You used to date someone who this man offended a long time ago. How odd. The conversation continues, and a woman sitting close by chimes in. She knows this acquaintance as well. So does the dweeb in the back of the plane. So does… seemingly everyone on the plane. What’s going on and where are we going? And how in the ever loving hell did we get here?

This is Wild Tales, the fantastic new film out of Argentina that is currently enjoying a (far too) limited theatrical release following its recent Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie is an anthology in which the only shared connection between the six stories is violence. The violence is strictly emotional in some segments, and brutally physical in others. But no matter who’s being hurt and who’s doing the hurting, there is a steady undercurrent of humor in every tale that makes the film undeniably compelling. At first, you won’t know if you’re allowed to laugh, but writer/director Damián Szifron is so unforgiving in his humor that he quickly crumbles any hesitation the viewer may have to laugh. Wild Tales is pitch black humor at its finest, and the second the movie was over, the only thing I hoped for was six new segments to magically appear.

I’m not going to fully describe the other segments. The bit on the plane opens the film, but I’ll leave the others for you to discover. Some take place in real(ish) time, others cover weeks in the life of a desperate soul. All are expert at exploring the random coincidences of life, and the hell that can follow a seemingly harmless act. For example, in one segment, we watch a man’s life fall apart after his car gets towed. The car being towed itself isn’t the problem. But it creates a snowball effect of disastrous events that ruins this poor bastard’s life. You ever feel like nothing is going your way, and when you’re describing your troubles to a friend, they can’t help but laugh? That’s what it’s like to watch this guy. You empathize with him, but you can’t help but howl at his misfortune (and, later, revenge).

Wild Tales is so good at establishing dread in each segment, that when one begins with a joyous wedding reception – strobe lights pound away as an excitable DJ blasts David Guetta’s “Titanium” – we can’t help but wonder how long it will take for things to go very, very wrong. So, chiefly, the script for Wild Tales is the standout star. So confident is its humor, so fierce is its sense of dismay. But all told, this film is shot, scored and acted to perfection.

As noted, Wild Tales is only playing in a handful of major cities right now, which is a damn shame. A movie this good, not to mention one that has found success at Cannes, Sundance, Telluride, TIFF and at the Academy Awards, should be out there for everyone to see. If you can track it down, do so immediately. Had I seen the film in 2014, it would’ve surely been included among my Top 10 favorite films of the year. A

Click here for a full list of theaters where Wild Tales is, and will be, playing