I remember reading about this movie during the week prior to this year’s Academy Awards, since it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. It was getting great reviews from critics and audiences, even though it eventually lost the award to “Ida”, from Poland. This past weekend I finally saw it and it was worth the wait: the movie is hilarious!
Directed by Damián Szifron and produced by Pedro Almodóvar, the movie is not a regular 2-hour film with only one story. It’s actually six short stories told separately, with no relation among themselves except for one common theme: revenge. It can be a revenge carefully planed for years, as we see in the first story (a man that has been rejected by everyone in his life), planned for days (as in the story of a man who keeps having his car towed by the transportation department), or a spontaneous revenge, based on something that just happened (two drivers fighting on the road).
I know that my description makes it look like a drama or a thriller, but it is actually a comedy above all. A dark sense of humor, to be exact. It shows what probably everybody would like to do in those situations but is stopped by common sense. Who doesn’t want to get back at someone that pisses you off while driving? Or revenge the murder of a loved one? Or just get back at the government for ripping us off with expensive and undeserving fines?
The dialogues are really funny and the actors are great. My friend and I were trying to decide which story was our favorite but we couldn’t! They are all really good and very entertaining!
