Maybe ‘palatable’ is the wrong word. ‘Alternative’ might be misleading, too. In fact, the title of this article might be total bullshit meant only to drag your attention to a movie that won’t get a lot of press. But just look at the trailer embedded below and tell me there isn’t more than a passing resemblance to Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist. That’s one of the beautiful things about gathering together world cinema under one roof: you get to see odd trends and similarities that cross cultures without apparent explanation.
So, Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Nymph, about which I wrote recently when the poster showed up, has premiered at Cannes. It is not horror, but a ghost story and a mystery, and, as Ratanaruang says, “sort of a transposition of an Edgar Allan Poe short story to a contemporary context.”
There aren’t many reviews available yet, but Todd at Twitch has his up. He’s not as enthusiastic as I (and probably he) might have hoped, but there are hints of good things. He compares it to Ploy, which had very good aspects, and also to the much more strange and challenging work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I’m not going to tell you to rush out and see the latter’s Tropical Malady, though anyone with patience will be rewarded for doing so, but there are evident notes of Blissfully Yours, a slightly more accessible film, on hand in this trailer.
Let’s bring this one to Toronto. I’m curious.