Carnage, an example of what the French call un film chorale, tells several intertwining stories. In the central tale, a young second-generation bullfighter, Victor (Julien Lescarret), is gored, and is rushed to the hospital in critical condition. A little girl, Winnie (Raphaëlle Molinier), sits next to a massive Great Dane and watches the fateful bullfight on television, and becomes obsessed with the bull. A university researcher, Jacques (Jacques Gamblin of Safe Conduct), cheats on his
massively pregnant wife, Betty (Lio), who hides a critical fact about her pregnancy from him. Jacques' brother, Luc (Bernard Sens), an amateur taxidermist, lives with their mother, Rosie (Esther Gorintin), who loves him, but withholds a family secret. Winnie's teacher, Jeanne (Lucia Sanchez), struggles to understand her neurotic mother, Alicia (Ángela Molina), when she visits. When her car is dented by a shopping cart, Carlotta (Chiara Mastroianni), a struggling actress, meets Alexis (Clovis Cornillac), a suicidal philosopher/skater who offers to lead her to the culprits. Carnage, the debut feature from writer/director Delphine Gleize, won the Sutherland Trophy at the 2002 London Film Festival and Best Screenplay at the 2002 Stockholm Film Festival. It was also shown at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and at Lincoln Center in New York as part of their 2003 Rendez-Vouz with French Cinema. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi
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.
[Director] Gleize has nevertheless written an imaginative and loopy script where the twisting storylines, each with its own distinct tone, eventually connect.
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.
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.
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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