Wild Tales (2014)

I had no expectations when I picked up Wild Tales, other than I knew it was foreign contemporary film that hadn't hit my radar, but was hanging out on the imdb.com top 250 list and I hadn't seen it.

This Argentinian film Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales) came with some generic description about being a film that was an analysis of human behavior and so I put it in the DVD player and went on the ride.

How this film became a top 250 film, or an Oscar nominee, I'm not really sure - not because it's bad - it's actually very enjoyable, but it's so atypical, in the sense it's an anthology film, with a loosely connected theme. It is in reality six short films strung together.

In watch this, it reminded me of Black Mirror, a favorite television anthology series, but instead of dealing with technology, it dealt with people on the edge of a nervous breakdown pushed to there limits and expressing then in there own animal like ways.

One of the joys of this series is that you really don't know what you're going to get, and even unlike an anthology television show you don't know how long the six stories will be and there is a variety of lengths and it's own set of variations and surprises. It's a pity I watched this alone, I could imagine the enjoyment of discussing this film and the individual stories with others.

My personal favorite is "Bombita" the story of a professional working man who finds himself at his wit end by the system after his car get's towed picking up a cake for his daughters birthday.

Many of these alone are great stand alone stories worthy of a discussion and reflection. This was a surprising joy to watch.