Skip to main content

Maldoror review – true-crime serial killer procedural induces stomach-turning horror

Inspired by a notorious real-life case, Fabrice Du Welz’s film starts strong but gets lost in the murky waters of conspiracy

Fabrice Du Welz began the century as a master of Belgian gothic, riding the wave of Euro-extreme cinema. Calvaire, or The Ordeal, from 2005, was a gruesome gripper. Since then, in a chequered career, he has more or less maintained his stride, and now he comes to Venice as director and co-writer of an initially promising true-crime horror procedural. It is loosely inspired by the serial killer and child rapist Marc Dutroux, whose case enraged the Belgian public when it became clear the country’s various quarrelling law-enforcement authorities, hampered by bureaucracy, incompetence and turf-war disputes, had in effect allowed Dutroux to go free for years.

It’s an intriguing premise and this baggy, free-ranging movie presents a tonal range of sour acrimony, anxiety and occasional flourishes of nauseous black comedy. But it’s a long film which finally – and rather perfunctorily – voyages into the murky waters of deep-state conspiracy, and the drama doesn’t really have the rhetorical resources or the performances to make that case plausibly or interestingly.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/l6T3FAB
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Rico Lewis helped harden up Manchester City’s treble challenge | Jamie Jackson

Guardiola believes advent of the teenage talent sowed seeds of change that turned his side into champions again Mid-January, the Etihad Campus. Before Tottenham’s visit a discontented Pep Guardiola is addressing a Manchester City team meeting that includes Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ederson. The champions are in second place, eight points behind Arsenal, each having played 18 games. Performances have dipped and so has the attitude of his players. The final match before the World Cup was a 2-1 home defeat by Brentford . Since the tournament, City have beaten Leeds and Chelsea, drawn with Everton and lost their previous outing , 2-1 at Manchester United. Seven points from 15 is not championship-defending form and, when being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Southampton is factored in, Guardiola can see City’s campaign derailing. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/h8WjbMX
Post a Comment
Read more

Wandsworth escape accused says it was ‘foolish’ to jail him with his ‘skill set’

Daniel Khalife, 23, says he absconded because he was ‘terrified’ of being locked up with dangerous offenders A former British soldier has told a jury he did not hand himself in after he escaped from prison because he was “finally demonstrating what a foolish idea it was” to imprison someone with his “skill set”. Daniel Khalife, 23, told the court he absconded from Wandsworth prison while on remand because he was “terrified” of being locked up with “serious sex offenders” and “terrorists” who wanted to kill him, and that he did not think his imprisonment would be in the public interest. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/vRZHkaw
Post a Comment
Read more

Bodies of Men: the love story taking on toxic masculinity in a time of war

Nigel Featherstone’s new novel tackles traditional conservatism and patriarchy through an unconventional romance How can you be a man and be anti-war? This is the question that Sydney-born novelist Nigel Featherstone, who is a pacifist, considered while he took up a three-month writing residency in a military library. He set out to discover what happens to very different expressions of masculinity placed under military pressure. “Australia does have a very defined, toxic brand of masculinity,” says the bespectacled Featherstone, seated by the window at his local pub facing the railway station at Goulburn, north of Canberra, while men on stools at the nearby bar sink beers and televisions on the walls screen horse racing results. Continue reading... from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2N8piOc
Post a Comment
Read more