Wild Tales ★★★★★

Damián Szifron: Wild Tales

This Oscar-nominated, wild-card film of the year from Damián Szifron and produced by Pedro Almodóvar and his brother is a wickedly delightful compendium of six stand-alone stories, relatable in their brutality, documenting Argentina’s descent into fallibility and madness.

A killer black comedy

Though it missed out on the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, critics have been singing Wild Tales' praises ever since, hailing it as one of the year's best releases. The film begins with a group of unsuspecting passengers awaiting the departure of their flight. After what turns out, after a series of impossible coincidences, to be the journey from hell, the film then hurtles us on a break-neck journey through the back-streets and aristocratic confines of Argentinian society.

We career from a late-night restaurant to a serious case of road-rage, from one man’s anger at a parking fine to the painful sorrows of a drink-driver, and finally reach a brutal and glittering crescendo at a larger-than-life Jewish wedding. What do all these violent vignettes have in common? Characters who'll stop at nothing to achieve their morally dubious ends.

Truly original

This is subversive humour at its absolute best, as Argentinian director Damián Szifron gives us an insight into his homeland’s most shameful of citizens and most far-reaching social problems. The deep satisfaction to be gained from the film is the ill-claimed justice each person receives, as tensions reach boiling-point and Szifron's dogged characters throw caution to the wind, using any means necessary to win the wicked game of life in Szifron's brutal depiction of the modern Argentine world.

Wild Tales is a firecracker of a film that brings something truly original to the screen – miss it at your peril. ★★★★★