Uncomfortable watching given recent events?Kramer and Sigman Films

It’s turned out to be a lucky thing that the magical Almodóvar name has been plastered all over the press for the lesser-known Damiàn Szifron’s latest film. Its touch has turned Wild Tales into mainstream gold, placing it in the position it rightfully deserves: this compilation of frantic, violent and hilarious short movies (strung together masterfully by their common theme) is constructed with the subversive talent and rebellious edge of the out-of-the-way, ‘art-house’ movie, yet plays out something like a raucously entertaining Spanish soap opera.

Szifron has previously written primarily for television, and, having labelled Argentina a nation where “TV is more like soap opera” while film remains on a different level, it is easy to recognise the melodrama and garishness of the former in Szifron’s take on the latter. Not only do the separate stories follow on from each other like various episodes, but the events revel in the abundance of action – subtlety is not the aim, and nor should it be. Scenes unfold in a crescendo of tension, violence and hilarity, within lavish weddings and roadside diners – archetypal soap scenarios.

Nevertheless, the ideas behind the stories are serious, most of which converge in their angry reaction to Argentina’s (and the rest of the world’s) corruption and stifling capitalism; yet I found myself grinning uncontrollably throughout, delighted at the descent of each situation into carnivalesque chaos and destruction.

The opening scene sets up the tone of the film: passengers on a plane begin to discover shared links with Gabriel Pasternak, a failing and talentless composer who has consequently been humiliated throughout his life. The uncanny absurdity escalates until the realisation dawns upon them that everyone who has ever wronged Pasternak, in any way, is on the plane, and plummeting to their deaths with the man himself at the wheel.

This is, of course, massively uncomfortable to watch in the wake of the all too recent Germanwings tragedy, yet it still manages to provoke simultaneous unrestrained laughter and horror as the plane hurtles straight towards a sunny suburban garden where his parents recline in deckchairs.

The atmosphere is one of losing control, of surrendering to animalistic urges to avenge; to wreak violence and havoc; to smash and destroy in the face of an engulfing system of controlling, unjust government and repressed urges. “The desire to react against injustice,” says Szifron, “is something we experience very often because we are made to be free. We are animals in the same way that a dog or a bear is an animal.” He sees beauty in the wild, away from the towering concrete structures amongst which citizens’ cars are mercilessly towed again and again from the streets, injustices unacknowledged and money wielded as a weapon to aid this circular system. The characters allow their animalistic impulsions to overflow, and it is an immensely thrilling and satisfying thing to watch.

The concept of ‘carnival’ – from the Ancient Greek Dionysia, to Roman Saturnalia and the Medieval European Feast of Fools – has long been rooted in the notion of irreverence towards societal systems of expected behaviour; a time for game-playing and role-reversing; irrepressible laughter and wildness; the grotesque and theatrical. It has been theorised that such rituals are necessary in order to release man’s craving for the animalistic.

Perhaps Szifron’s sequence of wild tales signals a growing contemporary need for such a release in the modern world. Whatever lies behind this curious compendium of fables, they are fiendishly entertaining and captivating.