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Carnage (2003)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 35
Fresh: 27
Rotten:8
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Theatrical Release:Sep 5, 2003 Limited
Synopsis: Delphine Gleize's startling first feature, CARNAGE, adroitly turns random moments into pieces of a tight-fitting puzzle, creating a thick multidimensional plot filled with unexpected parallels and... Delphine Gleize's startling first feature, CARNAGE, adroitly turns random moments into pieces of a tight-fitting puzzle, creating a thick multidimensional plot filled with unexpected parallels and delicately unfolding secrets. The film centers on the connection between a gored bullfighter and a young girl who watches the incident on television. The bull is destroyed, dismembered, and dispersed to markets in Spain, France, and Belgium. While the young girl, Winnie (Raphaelle Molinier), grapples with her understanding of death and personal identity, her parents buy a bull bone for their dog at a gourmet market. The salesclerk, Carlotta (Chiara Mastroianni), is a struggling actor trying to experience rebirth through aquatic exercises and primal screaming. Elsewhere, the university researcher Jacques (Jacques Gamblin), who has retained the eyes of the bull for his studies, finds himself emotionally distanced from his pregnant wife Betty (Lio). His brother, a taxidermist named Luc (Bernard Sens), covets the bull's horns which their mother (Esther Gorintin) gave him as a gift. In CARNAGE, the brave Gleize is on a complex cinematic storytelling mission. The subject matter is at times tragic, but moments of quirky comic relief show the rich contrasts in this discourse of life, love, and survival. [More]
Starring: Chiara Mastroianni, Angela Molina, Lio, Lucia Sanchez
Starring: Chiara Mastroianni, Angela Molina, Lio, Lucia Sanchez, Esther Gorintin, Maryline Even, Clovis Cornillac, Jacques Gamblin, Feodor Atkine
Director: Delphine Gleize
Director: Delphine Gleize
Screenwriter: Delphine Gleize
Producer: Jerome Dopffer
Composer: Eric Neveux
Studio: Wellspring
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Reviews for Carnage
Delphine Gleize achieves a mastery of the visual, the metaphoric, and the dramatic that few other veteran filmmakers could pull off.
[Director] Gleize has nevertheless written an imaginative and loopy script where the twisting storylines, each with its own distinct tone, eventually connect.
there are far better movies that don't try your patience like Carnage does
Patience will reward those who don't mind non-linear storytelling, but some of the stories aren't worth the wait.
Feels indulgent, far too long and, yes, very French ... but while it lasts you can't take your eyes off the screen!
Gleize is a smart director with a fresh eye, and she finds inventive ways to underscore her theme, which is that good things and bad things happen to most of us in roughly equal measure but that, somehow, we keep plugging away.
Carnage has some narrative messiness. But the beautiful thing here - besides Gleize's fabulous eye - is that not a single one of her solutions for the healing that takes place in her characters' lives is predictable.
The sort of film whose makers would be pleased to hear it called 'unclassifiable.' A more accurate description is 'unfathomable.'
For those who are patient, there are quite a few things to admire, including the performances and the film's ambitious, audacious storytelling conceits.
Whimsical irony is matched with arresting visuals throughout Carnage, and those moments carry the day even if you don't buy Gleize's everything-is-connected bull.
Confidently directed and tightly constructed, Carnage announces the presence of a fresh, powerful directorial mind with each frame.
The film eventually becomes tedious, but there are enough flashes of moral intelligence and cinematic inspiration here to make one eagerly anticipate Gleize's sophomore effort.
Whereas most movies about serendipity and degrees of human separation usually fail by trying to pick profundity from, well, dry bones, here, director Gleize knows that to dig too deeply only distracts one's attention from the strange comedy of life.
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