Review of Carne (1991) by Shane S — 26 Aug 2011

Gaspar Noe's relatively tame, yet still exceedingly dark, tale of the standstill of modern life and how the mere idea of revenge leads to some pretty stupid things (kind of a common theme in his films) is not as masterfully manipulative as his one-two punch "Irreversible" and "Enter the Void," but it does take many quirky things and pretty much turns them against the viewer's happiness.

A horse butcher (complete with footage of him killing a horse) raises a seemingly autistic daughter by himself because his ex-wife wanted a girl. As he raises her, they seem to take in a lot of the media around them, from sermons extolling independence to extremely violent luchador action flicks - and, according to some viewers of the short film's sequel, "I Stand Alone," it appears as if he's raising his daughter in the same way as the parents in "Dogtooth" raised their kids. However, you know that the Butcher loves his daughter to death, so much so that when she walks in his shop with a period stain, he stabs a random guy to death just because he thinks the dude raped her. Ol' butcher gets arrested, flirts with homosexuality in jail, and gets out only to find out that his daughter's been taken to a mental institution, his shop's been sold to a halal butcher, and that a (in his opinion) ugly waitress at a coffee shop has the hots for him. And how he tries to get his old life back. However, he's stuck in a pretty miserable life, forced to have sex with his new employer for room and board, unable to see his daughter for untold reasons (implied rape), and haunted by his stupid decisions to the point where he can't help but to become an animal. Just like the animals he butchers, he is fresh meat for the world.

Yeah, you can definitely see that Noe was still tweaking out his style to perfection (the film's pacing is not as good as it could be; it doesn't necessarily immerse you into this dark, unrelenting world that Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Woody Allen don't necessarily want to film), but a lot of his elements were in place: quirky camerawork (almost like it's been influenced by music videos, comedies, and stop-motion animation), background audio that forces the viewer to become sick at the whole thing (just like "Irreversible"), a color scheme completely dominated by reds and browns, and the underlying idea that the world is not that happy place that your parents told you it was when you were just a little filly. The film, however, is Noe's most verbal, as a lot of his later stuff tends to play around with non-verbal scenes where action is extremely prevalent (like in..."Irreversible"...yeah, figure that one out for yourself). The butcher, while serving as a really mad narrator that's just pissed off at how life's pretty much handed him the short straw, talks to some of the characters.

Overall, I say if you like short films, watch this. You might like how discordant the entire thing is or you might uncontrollably vomit at the horse butchering scene that opens the film, but overall, it's a film that, while not the "experimental" wonder that Rovi said it was, pretty much set Gaspar Noe on the right track to bigger, better, and more effective things. Just don't show this to bronies.