Wild Tales (film)
Wild Tales is a 2014 black comedy anthology film composed of six standalone shorts, all written and directed by Damián Szifron, united by a common theme of violence and vengeance.
It stars an ensemble cast consisting of Ricardo Darín, Oscar Martínez, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Érica Rivas, Rita Cortese, Julieta Zylberberg, and Darío Grandinetti, and was co-produced by Agustín Almodóvar and Pedro Almodóvar. The film's musical score was composed by Gustavo Santaolalla.
The film received critical acclaim, particularly in South America where it won many accolades, as well as the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language in the United Kingdom and the Goya Award for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film in Spain. Additionally, it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, and for the Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
The film is composed of six short segments: "Pasternak", "Las ratas", "El más fuerte", "Bombita", "La propuesta", and "Hasta que la muerte nos separe". In the American localisation, the third and the fifth had their names changed to "Road to Hell" and "The Bill"."Pasternak"
Two passengers on an airplane start a conversation and discover they both know a man named Pasternak: the woman is his ex-girlfriend, and the man is a music critic who savagely reviewed his work. Several other passengers speak up and claim to know Pasternak as well. In fact, everyone on the flight is somehow connected to Pasternak, and all of their relationships with him ended negatively. A flight attendant reveals that Pasternak is the plane's cabin chief and has locked himself inside the cockpit. Amidst the panic, Pasternak crashes the plane into his parents' house."Las ratas"
A loan shark is the only customer at a small restaurant by a highway. He treats the waitress very poorly when ordering his food. She recognizes him as the man who, years before, ruined her family and caused her father's untimely death. The cook, offers to mix rat poison into the man's food. The waitress refuses the cook's offer, but unbeknownst to her the cook adds the poison anyway. When the waitress finds out, she does not take the food away from the man.The man's teenage son arrives and begins to share his father's meal. Feeling guilty that the boy might eat the poison, the waitress tries to take the plate away. The man attacks her after she throws food in his face, but the cook kills him with a chef's knife. The last scene depicts the son getting medical treatment from a responding ambulance while the waitress sits next to him. Meanwhile, the cook is arrested and driven away in a police car.
"El más fuerte"
Diego is driving through the desert and tries to overtake a slower, older car that consistently blocks his path. When he finally passes, he insults the other driver, Mario. Further up the road, Diego gets a flat tire, while Mario catches up and takes his revenge. He parks his car in front of Diego's, smashes his windshield, and then defecates and urinates on it. Just as Mario is about to leave, Diego pushes him and his car into the river and drives off.Fearing retribution from Mario, Diego soon returns to run Mario down, but loses control and crashes into the river. Mario enters Diego's car through the trunk, and both men start to fight. Mario leaves Diego being strangled by a seat belt around his neck. He then rips off a piece of his shirt, lights it on fire and places it in the gas tank in an attempt to incinerate the car, but Diego grabs him and prevents him from escaping. As the car explodes, the tow truck driver finally arrives. The police later discover the two charred bodies holding onto each other and mistake them for lovers who died in a crime of passion.
"Bombita"
Simón Fischer, a demolition expert, picks up a cake for his daughter's birthday party and discovers that his car has been towed. He goes to the towed-car lot and argues with an employee to no avail, insisting that there were no signs of a no-parking zone. He grudgingly pays the towing fee and misses his daughter's party. The next day, when Simón is refused a refund for the fee at the DMV, he attacks the glass partition and is arrested. The story makes the news and Fischer's company fires him. His wife seeks a divorce and sole custody of their daughter.After Fischer applies unsuccessfully for another job, he discovers that his car has been towed again. He retrieves the car and packs it with explosives in a tow zone. After it is towed again, he detonates the explosives, destroying the towing office with no casualties. Fischer is imprisoned and becomes a local hero, with calls on social media for his release. His wife and daughter visit him in prison for his birthday, bringing him a cake in the form of a tow truck.
"La propuesta"
A teenager, in his father's car, arrives home after committing a hit-and-run on a pregnant woman. The woman and her child are reported dead on the local news, and her husband swears vengeance. The driver's parents form a plan with his lawyer to have their groundskeeper José take the blame for half a million dollars. However, the local prosecutor sees through the scheme because the car's mirrors were not adjusted for the caretaker's line of sight.The lawyer negotiates to include the prosecutor in the deal for more money, the caretaker asks for an apartment along with his money, and the prosecutor asks for an additional payment to pay off the police. However, the guilty son says that he wants to confess to the crowd gathered outside the house. Frustrated, the father calls off the deal, telling his son to confess. The lawyer renegotiates and the father agrees on a lower price. As José is taken away by the police, the dead woman's husband strikes him repeatedly on the head with a hammer.
"Hasta que la muerte nos separe"
At a Jewish wedding party, the bride, Romina, discovers that her groom, Ariel, has cheated on her with one of the guests. She confronts him as they dance in front of everyone, and runs off in distress to the roof, where a kitchen worker comforts her. Ariel discovers Romina having sex with the worker. She vindictively announces to him that she will sleep with every man who shows her interest, and take him for all he is worth if he tries to divorce her, or when he dies. They return to the party and continue the festivities.Romina pulls the woman Ariel slept with onto the dance floor, spins her around, and slams her into a mirror. She insists that the photographer film Ariel and his mother weeping, declaring that she will show it at a future wedding. Ariel's mother attacks Romina but is pulled off by her husband and Romina's father; Romina collapses out of sheer emotion. Ariel approaches Romina and extends a hand. They dance, kiss, and begin to have sex by the cake as the guests leave.
Production
In 2007, director Damián Szifron had a break from directing and producing TV series and focused on writing. Alongside working on three major projects at the same time—a science fiction film series, a western and a love story—Szifron was writing short stories just to "let off steam", and eventually realized they were related. There were initially twelve tales, out of which he chose the "wilder" ones. The second, third, fourth and sixth segments were partially based on real-life situations Szifron went through; the second was written in a road immediately after he had an argument with an Audi driver. At first, all stories were written as independent ones, and each of them could have been made into a film. However, Szifron thought that grouped they would have more impact so he decided to "reduce the conflicts to its minimum and find their climaxes." Often described as a black humor film, Szifron stressed the stories were not planned as comedies but rather as a thriller or as a drama depending on the part; in fact "they begin as dramas. The humor is a consequence of what these characters feel in a very dramatic situation." Ultimately, he thought neither comedy nor drama were appropriate labels, and considered that "catastrophe movie" is a good term for it.All stories are very different; production designer Clara Notari said "They have their own visual identity, as if each were a different movie, with its own spatial dimensions, colors, style, textures and set decoration". Despite this, Szifron stressed they "are vital organs of the same body" that sustain the film and "together are more robust and make a larger universe". Because of this desire, Szifron scrapped an early pre-production idea of having each episode done in different cinematographic styles—the fifth would be a black-and-white take; the second would be shot with anamorphic lenses and 35mm, and the last with social event video cameras. Anyway, the director said the film's strength is not in the connection the accounts have. He asserted that "they are independent stories, with separate independent characters and conflicts". Szifron explained that this was because he was inspired by concept and jazz albums, and by the circus. For the albums, the tracks, although a unity, have their "own identity"; during a circus spectacle there are different acts that have value for different reasons but they are one whole. Szifron was also influenced by television anthology series Amazing Stories, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, as well as film New York Stories, and book Nine Stories.
The film was a co-production between the Argentine Kramer & Sigman Films, Telefe Productions and Corner Contenidos and the Spanish company El Deseo, owned by Agustín and Pedro Almodóvar—the Almodóvars were first interested to work with Szifron after watching his 2005 film On Probation. With a budget of $4 million—70% from Argentina and 30% from Spain, Wild Tales had an eight-week shoot between April and May 2013, and had locations in cities of Buenos Aires, Salta and Jujuy provinces. The third act was specifically filmed on the route that connects Salta and Cafayate because, as Szifron declared, "the script required a desolate route with stunning scenery and degrees of sobriety" to have a contrast between the violence of the fight and the beauty of the environment. In the end of the filming, there was material for "three different movies with different takes" so Szifron went through a six- or seven-month process of editing the film, which was done in his house.
Each one of the main cast members were considered by Szifron to be main-role actors that are rarely seen in the same film. The director said it was possible to assemble these "very important actors" because they appreciated the screenplays, and because the shooting only took ten days for each short. Darín and Martínez were actors Szifron already wanted to work with and as such they were given the opportunity to choose the role they wanted.
Themes
Despite the clear common theme of violence and vengeance, what connects the accounts, according to the director, is "the fuzzy boundary that separates civilization from barbarism, the vertigo of losing your temper, and the undeniable pleasure of losing control". This is explored through the concept that human beings have animalistic features. Szifron considers the main difference between humans and animals is the capacity one has to restrain oneself, as opposed to animals who are guided by their instincts. Humans "have a fight or flee mechanism, but it comes with a very high cost. Most of us live with the frustration of having to repress oneself, but some people explode. This is a movie about those who explode". It deals with "daily life" aspects and "is a movie about the desire for freedom, and how this lack of freedom, and the rage and anguish it produces, can cause us to run off the rails." The main issue, according to Szifron, "is the pleasure of reacting, the pleasure of reacting toward injustice."The film is said to feature a "political anger" and "political subversiveness," and, according to La Capital, it has sparked debates about its "sociological and political side." As such, the newspaper promoted a debate about the film with social security specialist Martín Appiolaza and sociologist Daniel Cholakian. Appiolaza said the film shows both structural violence and specific violence towards school and work and among couples, as well as different types of discrimination. He concluded, "the theme of the film is the inequality that arouses violent reactions". In contrast, Cholakian stated it depicted a particular form of violence; the violence that involves upper-middle-class urban people. He affirmed that in reality the main victims of social violence are the poorest people, "So the film is light years from reflecting the universality of that theme". Cholakian went further, commenting he refused to discuss violence from Wild Tales and dared to think that Szifron would agree with him. However, Szifron believed it had a universal range "in a world where power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of wealthy and powerful individuals."
Several reviewers interpreted the film as a critique of "21st-century Argentinean daily life" or "a backdrop of 20th century Argentine oppression". However, Szifron said it could be set "in any other country and in any other period of time". He declared the central theme to be universal: "man versus a system that's designed against him, not to facilitate life, but to take things out of you." As such, it criticises several problems and "frustrations of contemporary life", including government and corporate corruption, bureaucratic malfeasance, economic and social inequality, abuse of power, emotional and physical abuse, class and gender bias, social exigence of marriage, macho culture, and need for revenge. It deals with money, power and elitism, and depicts people as selfish, disloyal, and materialistic. In such a "social Darwinian world", the acts of vengeance are usually motivated by class or economic conflicts, and underlying them is a desire to break free from what Szifron refers to as the "capitalist cage".
Claudia Puig of USA Today said that it explores "the dark side of humanity and the dehumanization of society", while Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post felt it was "a sharply observed case study in human nature." Eric Kohn of IndieWire affirmed that the last segment alters the overall meaning of the film: "The bizarrely touching conclusion is a cynical take on the ups and downs of a relationship, hinting at the idea that even a mad world divided against itself thrives on the need for companionship." On the other hand, Ty Burr from Boston Globe concluded, "there is no lasting meaning, other than that people are funny, nasty animals when pushed to their limits."
Release and reception
Critical reception
Wild Tales was critically acclaimed; in Argentina, its appraisal was described by Clarín as "a phenomenal reception", and English-speaking reviewers were also favourable. On Rotten Tomatoes, based on 152 reviews, Wild Tales holds a 94% "fresh" rating, with an average score of 8/10, and with the critical consensus being: "Wickedly hilarious and delightfully deranged, Wild Tales is a subversive satire that doubles as a uniformly entertaining anthology film". Metacritic reports an average score of 77, based on 33 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Time commentator Richard Corliss compared the film to an Ambrose Bierce or Roald Dahl story, calling it "the year's most fearlessly funny film", and naming it the ninth best film of 2014.Burr stated it has a "masterful sense of cinematic storytelling", while O'Sullivan affirmed "Szifron handles the tone and presentation masterfully". Ariston Anderson from Filmmaker commented, "There is truly never a dull moment... Wild Tales is a laugh-out-loud riot from start to finish", and Mar Diestro-Dópido of Sight & Sound said, "Each morsel of well-rounded, perfectly structured storytelling becomes part of a coherent, exuberant whole". Clarín film critic, Pablo O. Scholz, said "The film pulls us in from the start until the end". Although he commented each story tone is different, Scholz stated the "tension... never decays, and keeps the viewer with a knot in the stomatch for two hours". In opposition, Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times was critical of its pace: "Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but Argentine writer-director Damián Szifron allows it to sit until it congeals in the dreary six-part anthology Wild Tales." Robert Horton from Seattle Weekly further criticized it for relying on twists, "a technique that doesn't quite disguise how in-your-face the lessons are", and ultimately dubbed the film "a scattering of gotchas".
The humor was called "a subversive that manages to be both psychologically astute and all-out outrageous" by Jay Weissberg of Variety. Diestro-Dópido said "The humour of Wild Tales is pitch-black, its irony razor-sharp, its sarcasm painfully perverse and its unpredictability ludicrous, violent but also bitingly funny". Manohla Dargis from The New York Times compared its use of humor and coincidence to O. Henry's work, as did Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly because of its "ironic twist endings".
The cast was deemed consistent through the episodes by The Hollywood Reporters David Rooney, and said to be "superb" by Diestro-Dópido. Érica Rivas received particular appraisal for her "star-making performance", as dubbed by Bruce Ingram of Chicago Sun-Times. While David Edelstein of Vulture.com said the cast is "incredibly credible given the characters' outlandish behavior," Horton was critical of the characterization, stating characters have "illogical behavior", mostly in the last segment. Similarly, Richard Brody of The New Yorker said it "offers little in the way of context or characterization" and then "characters behave so rudely and crudely, there's no reason to care about what happens to them." On the other hand, O'Sullivan declared, "The protagonists are exaggerated without being caricatures", and Jordan Hoffman of the New York Daily News affirmed, "All are funny because all feel true". Puig, Steven Rea of Philly.com and Diestro-Dópido also felt the characters to be believable and relatable because most viewers would feel familiar with the situations or frustrations the characters go through.
"Visuals are flawless", stated Weissberg, who praised both its special effects and its cinematography by Javier Julia, who has "a lean sense of irony that adds to the general pleasure". The reason it is a "good-looking film... crafted in high style" is, in Rooney's opinion, credited to "lots of eye-catching touches from production designer Clara Notari and unconventional camera angles from cinematographer Javier Julia." For Peter Howell of Toronto Star, Julia "imparts a visual appreciation of the absurd that's somewhere between a Looney Tunes cartoon and Grand Guignol theatre." The music by Gustavo Santaollala was deemed "a terrific spaghetti Western-flavored score" by Rooney. Weissberg affirmed the soundtrack "fits the tone without pushing any wink-wink superiority".
Weissberg commented that while "the overall enjoyment rarely flags", "not all the episodes are equally successful". For example, Weissberg and O'Sullivan said "The Bill" felt displaced within the film because of its "darker tone", and its "mood of bitter cynicism. According to Howell, "It lacks the manic love of the ridiculous that runs through other sketches", and Puig affirmed it "borders on melodrama." Rooney further considered it and "Bombita" had "a more sober tone that lets the air out of the balloon of delirious mayhem created by the opening three episodes." In fact, the first segment was said to be "a perfect starter" by Puig, and Horton said "the rest of this anthology feature doesn't live up to the wicked curtain-raiser". Also, Rea considered it to the best segment along with the last one. While Hoffman commented, "The final set piece is the most outrageous", Nashawaty deemed "The Bill" the best segment, and David Edelstein of Vulture.com considered "Bombita" "the purest of all the tales, the one that distills the mad-as-hell vigilante". Nashawaty criticized "Road to Hell" because it "feel like cheeky one-joke setup in search of a second or third joke". In opposition, Weissberg affirmed "Szifron's consummate skill at narration and setup, combined with inventive absurdity, makes it fresh and thoroughly entertaining."
Both in Europe and Latin America film critics dubbed it "Characters on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", alluding to Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which Almodóvar himself considered a fair comparison. For example, on Almodóvar influence, Rooney said "It's there in the off-kilter humor, in the stylish visuals and bold use of music, and in the affection for ordinary people pushed to extraordinary extremes." Bob Mondello of NPR said the last segment "is weird, sexy and violent enough to make you think of the wild tales of director Pedro Almodóvar". Other similarities were noted, including to Pulp Fiction, Steven Spielberg's Duel, Michael Douglas-featuring Falling Down, and Emir Kusturica. While "Pasternak" was often compared to The Twilight Zone because of its series of revelations, the third segment was often compared to a cartoon, especifically to a Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon, and was said to have slapstick touches and to be "Tarantino-esque". It was also labeled "a cross between Steven Spielberg's Duel and a violent Tom and Jerry cartoon" by Nashawaty, and "a combination of Deliverance and an R-rated Wile E. Coyote cartoon" by Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail.
Cultural impact
The New York Times reported that it became "a genuine social phenomenon" and that some characters gained a cult status. For example, it inspired "I am Bombita" to become a catchphrase similar to "going postal" in the United States. Rivas, from the last story, said she has been stopped in the street and asked several times to say "Film this for me, Nestor!".After the 2015 crash of Germanwings Flight 9525, BFI and Curzon cinemas modified their home cinema listings of this film stating that there was a similarity between the fictional crash at the start of the film and the real Germanwings crash.
Accolades and public reception
The film debuted on 17 May 2014 at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was selected to compete for its main prize, the Palme d'Or, and had a ten-minute standing ovation. The film's popularity exploded, according to The Hollywood Reporter, becoming a fan favorite during its exhibitions at Telluride and Toronto film festivals. After its praised festival tour, it was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards. Out of nine nominations at the 29th Goya Awards, it won the Best Ibero-American Film. During the 2nd Platino Awards, it won eight out of ten, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film also won the Audience Award for Best European Film at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, and the award for the Best Non-English Language Film at the BAFTA Awards.The film opened in Argentina on 21 August 2014, and during its first weekend it set the country's record for an opening with 450,000 tickets. After 24 days, it has become the most-seen film of the year in Argentina with more than two million spectators in 275 cinemas. By September, it was estimated that it had sold more than 2.4 million tickets, making it the most-seen Argentine film of all time. In the same month, it became the first domestic film to surpass 100 million pesos at the box office. It sold over 3.9 million tickets and grossed $17.5 million in Argentina. Exhibited in 33 other countries, it grossed $27,006,530 worldwide.
| Award | Category | Recipients | Result |
| Academy Awards | Best Foreign Language Film | Wild Tales | |
| Ariel Awards | Best Ibero-American Film | Wild Tales | |
| Biarritz Film Festival | Audience Award | Wild Tales | |
| Biarritz Film Festival | Best Actress | Érica Rivas | |
| British Academy Film Award | Best Film Not in the English Language | Wild Tales - Damián Szifron | |
| Cannes Film Festival | Palme d'Or | Wild Tales - Damián Szifron | |
| Critics' Choice Movie Award | Best Foreign Language Film | Wild Tales | |
| Goya Awards | Best Film | Wild Tales | |
| Goya Awards | Best Spanish Language Foreign Film | Wild Tales | |
| Goya Awards | Best Director | Damián Szifron | |
| Goya Awards | Best Original Screenplay | Damián Szifron | |
| Goya Awards | Best Actor | Ricardo Darín | |
| Goya Awards | Best Original Score | Gustavo Santaolalla | |
| Goya Awards | Best Editing | Pablo Barbieri, Damián Szifron | |
| Goya Awards | Best Production Supervision | Esther Garcia | |
| Goya Awards | Best Makeup and Hairstyles | Marisa Amenta, Néstor Burgos | |
| Platino Awards | Best Film | Wild Tales | |
| Platino Awards | Best Director | Damián Szifron | |
| Platino Awards | Best Screenplay | Damián Szifron | |
| Platino Awards | Best Actor | Leonardo Sbaraglia | |
| Platino Awards | Best Actress | Erica Rivas | |
| Platino Awards | Best Original Music | Gustavo Santaolalla | |
| Platino Awards | Best Film Editing | Damián Szifron, Pablo Barbieri | |
| Platino Awards | Best Art Direction | Clara Notari | |
| Platino Awards | Best Cinematography | Javier Juliá | |
| Platino Awards | Best Sound | José Luis Díaz | |
| Satellite Award | Best Foreign Language Film | Wild Tales | |
| San Sebastián Film Festival | Audience Award for Best European Film | Wild Tales | |
| Sarajevo Film Festival | Audience Award | Wild Tales | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Film | Wild Tales | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Director | Damián Szifron | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Supporting Actor | Oscar Martínez | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Supporting Actress | Érica Rivas | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Supporting Actress | Rita Cortese | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best New Actor | Diego Gentilez | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Original Screenplay | Damián Szifron | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Cinematography | Javier Juliá | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Editing | Damián Szifron, Pablo Barbieri | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Original Music | Gustavo Santaolalla | |
| Silver Condor Awards | Best Sound | José Luis Díaz | |
| Sur Awards | Best Film | Wild Tales | |
| Sur Awards | Best Director | Damián Szifron | |
| Sur Awards | Best Actor | Ricardo Darín | |
| Sur Awards | Best Actor | Oscar Martínez | |
| Sur Awards | Best Actor | Leonardo Sbaraglia | |
| Sur Awards | Best Actress | Erica Rivas | |
| Sur Awards | Best Actress | Rita Cortese | |
| Sur Awards | Best Supporting Actor | Germán De Silva | |
| Sur Awards | Best Supporting Actor | Diego Gentile | |
| Sur Awards | Best Supporting Actor | Osmar Núñez | |
| Sur Awards | Best Supporting Actress | María Onetto | |
| Sur Awards | Best New Actor | Diego Velázquez | |
| Sur Awards | Best New Actor | Walter Donado | |
| Sur Awards | Best Original Screenplay | Damián Szifron | |
| Sur Awards | Best Cinematography | Javier Juliá | |
| Sur Awards | Best Editing | Damián Szifron, Pablo Barbieri | |
| Sur Awards | Best Art Direction | Clara Notari | |
| Sur Awards | Best Costume Design | Ruth Fischerman | |
| Sur Awards | Best Original Music | Gustavo Santaolalla | |
| Sur Awards | Best Sound | José Luis Díaz | |
| Sur Awards | Best Make Up | Marisa Amenta | |
| WAFCA Awards | Best Foreign Language Film | Wild Tales |