No. 359 : Wild Men (2021)

 

Wild Men at the IMDb

 This subtitled Danish film was offered up to me on the BBC iPlayer and I was glad that I gave it a go. Most Scandinavian films involve murders and detective work in the dark, but this was mostly good fun and it had a strong heart.

The film opens with a large man dressed in animal skins attempting to shoot a goat with his homemade bow and arrow. He fails to nail his quarry and ends up having to settle for a toad instead, which causes him to be sick. He’s obviously a novice at the outdoor life and he soon heads to a petrol station/grocery store where his lack of money leads to him fighting with the staff and making off with a basket of shopping.

Meanwhile three more urban young men come a cropper when they hit an elk in the road and crash. There is seemingly only one survivor, and he staggers off with their large holdall of money. He soon stumbles into the path of our fur clad hero Martin, who manages to carry out some pretty decent first aid, including some stitches on a nasty leg gash.

Elsewhere the police are looking into Martin’s shop heist and into the crashed car, which now has no bodies, unless you count the elk hanging out of the front, which I do.

Two hapless policemen find the injured bagman but Martin decides to help his new friend and handcuffs the two cops together. The bagman, whose name is Musa, convinces Martin that they should head to an idyllic village where people live as Vikings did, off the land. As they set off on their quest a jaded police chief ramps up the investigation and Musa’s erstwhile colleagues set about recovering their cash. Who will achieve their goal? – and is it one that is worth having?

I quite enjoyed this film which was for the most part a gentle comedy, but one laced with a bit of gore, torture and some killings. The central theme was one of isolation and of people struggling with the modern world.

We didn’t get a lot of backstory to Martin’s plight but we know his life in the woods amounted to only ten days when we first encounter him. His seemingly long-suffering wife and his two daughters – and their rabbit! -set off from Denmark to find him in the Norwegian forests and, to be fair, she does a lot better than the cops!

The ‘tired of life’ policeman was a bit of a cliché but I liked his curmudgeonly attitude, and he got a fitting end, something akin to that of Mike in ‘Breaking Bad’. There was some commentary on immigration and the dilution of traditional values – some of it deliberate, such as the monetised Viking village and some of it less so with the drugs trade seemingly following the incomers. This slant was tempered by the Martin/Musa relationship which ended on a positive note.

I don’t think I learned much here – certainly nothing about surviving outdoors! – but it was a warm good-natured film that offered some social commentary and a few laughs along the way.

Best Bit - Viking Village Visit

W Rating 15/23

No.348 : Who You Think I Am (2019)

Who You Think I Am at the IMDb

Juliette Binoche plays Claire in this French drama, a lady who is as nutty as squirrel shit.

We meet Claire as she is engaging with her new therapist. She’s frustrated that her former analyst has suffered a stroke meaning that she has to recap her story, the one that brought her under psychiatric care. This helps us as the story mostly unfolds in flashback, with it beginning as the 50 year old lecturer is having quite the jolly time with her younger boyfriend. He’s not too keen however and the relationship is clearly floundering. Claire lives alone, sharing custody of her two boys with her ex-husband who left her for a younger woman.

Claire starts to nosey through her boyfriend’s Facebook on the sly, having gained backdoor access by befriending some of his friends. She casually likes a few photos taken by one such friend and the two start to chat when he thanks her for her approval. Claire enjoys the flirty chat and starts to pose as ‘Clara’, using photos she finds on the net to promote her younger alter ego.

The online relationship starts to blossom and Claire barely notices when her boyfriend leaves her. She starts a Facebook page for Clara and uses her son’s old mobile for contact. Her new beau, Alex, is keen for a meet up but for obvious reasons Claire has to keep him at arms length. At one point the two almost meet when their GPS signals match up but Alex looks straight through Claire as he forlornly seeks out Clara.

Things start to get messy when Claire neglects her kids and starts to act out at work and in her car, egged on by her would be lover’s dirty talk. Eventually she runs out of excuses and tells Alex of her fictitious lover and their plans to move to Brazil. It looks like an innocent flirtation has resolved without issue - apart from her being a total timewaster - but why is she seeing a psychologist?

Things take a darker turn when her ex-boyfriend later tells her that Alex has killed himself over some woman he never met on Facebook. Claire is devastated but presents her doctor with a new book she has written that charts how the relationship could have worked out. We see this enacted in full as the pair enjoy a whirlwind romance - can we know what is real, what is imagined and what is the state of Claire’s mind?

I really enjoyed this film with its attractive cast, excellent direction and clever narrative. It could have been boring with a lot of the story relayed by phone calls and texts but it zipped along and kept me guessing. I enjoyed the French dialogue and feel that subtitles help you stay immersed in a film as you aren’t distracted by your phone and the like, as you need to keep reading what is on the screen.

Binoche is excellent as Claire - she is super sexy and a lot like Elaine out of ‘Seinfeld’. In some ways she was too pretty, as it would be a different film if she was a fatty with a bad complexion. As it was, Alex would have jumped at the chance of a date with Claire, had she come clean.

My guesses at the outcome were all undone by a few neat twists and, although we never doubted that Claire had issues, it was interesting to see her fantasy played out and her reactions to the twists she experienced herself.

Things like online romances and age gap relationships were explored in intimate detail and there was plenty of food for thought. The cast were all excellent and I think the story suited the Parisian location were romance and flirting seemed natural and cool - set this in Glasgow and it’s just a crazed stalker with a SIM card.

Overall an excellent and moving piece of work that has a lot to say about our society, addiction to mobile devices and the age old quest to be loved.

Get it on Netflix right now.

Best Bit : Who’s Phone is That Ringing? ‘W’ Rating : 20/23