film review

Taxidermia

By Keith O'Sullivan

(05/09/07) - Released on DVD after a very limited cinematic outing in the UK, Hungarian director György Pálfi's sophomore feature deserves a wider audience. Just avoid eating while watching it. Taxidermia is an interesting but relentlessly squalid and visceral piece of magic realism, which clearly owes a large debt to David Cronenberg.

The film is a portmanteau of three sections, the first two based on short stories by Lajos Parti Nagy. In the first, Morosgovanyi (Csaba Czene), a dim-witted soldier, is bullied by his commanding officer and reviled by the young women of the barracks. However, he finds relief in ejaculating fire and in copulating with a pig's carcass and the lieutenant's wife.

The product of this union (or these unions), Balatony, is the subject of the second story, set in the Communist era. Balatony's life is devoted to gluttony, and he becomes a competitor in national speed-eating contests. In the final section, set in the present, Balatony has become a grotesquely obese invalid, tended by his emaciated son, Lajoska (Marc Bischoff). Resentful of his father, Lajoska, a taxidermist, plans to practice his skills on his own body – and does so, to horrifying effect.

Whether some sort of political allegory is intended in presenting this bizarre series of events is a matter left opaque. What is very clear, from the various memorable tableaux of bestiality, masturbation, vomiting, obesity, dissection and surgical self-mutilation on show, is a pre-occupation with physical excess. There is no attempt to invite empathy with these unfortunate individuals, who act on the basest of impulses throughout. Balatony, for instance, regards his own son as "a cyst."

The film is, and works best as, a late entry in the body horror genre. It is redolent not only of Cronenberg's self-anatomising works like Dead Ringers but, particularly, Brian Yuzna's underrated film Society, whose 'shunting' antagonists displayed similar bodily consumption and transformation. Like Society, there is a sly strand of jet-black humour throughout: "I had a vomiting technique named after me," Balatony eulogises, and a Michael Jackson poster is seen fleetingly on the wall of Lajoska's office.

The performances throughout are committed. German actor Bischoff, eerily resembling a dieting Mackenzie Crook or David Thewlis, is excellent as the doleful loner of a son who slips almost wordlessly into insanity. However, the largest presence, in more ways than one, is the Hungarian singer Trócsányi as the monstrous Balatony. Making his dramatic debut in a feature film, Trócsányi dominates every scene he is in, and the script even contrives to give him a (somewhat dramatically redundant) karaoke scene.

The film's production values are also well up to scratch. Particular mention must be made of Gergely Pohárnok's cinematography, which establishes the film's bleak, detached feel, from the opening fog-bound barracks to the dark labyrinth of Lajoska's workshop at the end.

Taxidermia took its director five years to make. It is to be hoped that his next project, billed as a fairy tale, will not take so long to bring to fruition. In the meantime, a cautious recommendation can be made for this curious, visually impressive if uneven, little triptych.

The DVD of György Pálfi's Taxidermia is out now. Please follow links provided to buy a copy and support Kamera by doing so.

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