Calvaire (The Ordeal)

By Keith O'Sullivan

Imagine Deliverance reworked by the League of Gentlemen and you will have some idea of Calvaire's plot and tone. Alternately comic and horrifying, and always bizarre, the feature debut of television writer Fabrice du Welz has all the hallmarks of a cult classic.

Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas) is an itinerant cabaret singer, touring nursing homes and inspiring the unrequited lust of their female residents. A few days before Christmas, he sets off for a gig in the South of France, but becomes lost on rural back roads. Stevens takes refuge at an isolated inn run by middle-aged loner, Bartel (Jackie Berroyer). Initially just odd, it quickly emerges that Bartel is psychotic. He develops an obsession with the younger man, whom he becomes convinced is the wife that had abandoned him years earlier. Soon, Marc finds himself fighting for survival - against both his host and some equally-deranged locals.

Like the team behind the League of Gentlemen, du Welz is a horror aficionado. Fans will enjoy ticking off references to 1970s genre classics, notably The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. With Stevens' degradation at the hands of Bartel and the villagers, plus a dose of bestiality, the violence here is explicit, squalid and unpleasant. But there's an equally knowing line of bleak humour throughout, established early on in the sight of the deadpan Stevens crooning dreadful lyrics ('We'll be together, head and legs') for his elderly admirers. This blend of horror and humour reaches a climax in a surreal dance scene in the village pub, the locals lurching about like multiples of Karloff's Frankenstein monster. As with much of David Lynch's work (think of the dwarf who speaks backwards in Twin Peaks), the spectacle is both absurd and unsettling.

And that's the point. Du Welz and co-writer Romain Protat are more interested in experimentation and challenging the audience than narrative logic. No explanation is forthcoming for the insane behaviour on view. There's no final retaliation of the kind that Hollywood conventionally demands. Above all, the central figure is curiously unsympathetic. From the nursing homes to Bartel's inn and the village, Stevens remains passive and is defined by the irrational passions he provokes in others. The contrast between Marc's blankness and the hysteria of other characters is a source of black comedy, but an allegory of Christ's experiences is also clearly intended. This is more subtle in the dialogue (tellingly, Bartel's wife was called Gloria, lending hymnbook undertones to lines like "Gloria, why did you come back?") than visually. In one scene, Stevens is actually nailed to a cross; later, when fleeing, he stumbles upon a wooden effigy of the crucified Christ.

All the actors commit to the lurid proceedings with gusto. Lucas brings an apt enigmatic quality to the unheroic hero. Berroyer, who looks like an older Paul Giamatti in Sideways, is excellent as the sad and crushed, but terrifyingly unstable Bartel. However, the real 'stars' of Calvaire are its look and sound. In a series of murky tableaux, Benoît Debie, cinematographer of Irreversible, and sound editor Frédéric Meert, capture the fog, snow, mud and wind of the film's rural Liège setting: one can almost feel the harsh micro-climate.

Acclaimed in the Critics' Week section at Cannes in 2004, Calvaire is a playful film of ideas that rewards repeat viewings. The DVD includes an illuminating interview with du Welz, as well as his equally-macabre 1999 short, A Wonderful Love.

Calvaire(The Ordeal) is out now.

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