[REVIEW] Calvaire is an unforgiving nostalgia trip
TW: sexual assault
Originally coined as a way to disparage the use of excessive sex and/or violence in the work of upcoming French filmmakers, the New French Extreme label has been defined in waves that begin as early as the 1990s and attributed to people with wildly different artistic sensibilities. Though some films share similarly bleak outlooks on French sociopolitical issues and a deeply conflicted national identity, the term tends to get slapped on anything even remotely horror-related that comes from the region. One drawback to this is the expectation for everything under the “extreme” umbrella to exceed a certain bloodlust. The benefit to a film like Calvaire is that its reputation precedes it.
Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas) is a traveling singer who has just finished performing at an assisted living facility. En route to his next gig, Marc’s van breaks down at the entrance of a forest. With help from a stranger looking for his lost dog, and a sign indicating a nearby inn, Marc finds his way to shelter. The inn’s owner, Bartel (Jackie Berroyer), shows hospitality by feeding the singer and towing his ride on one condition: do not wander off into town. This warning is not heeded. What results is a nightmarish scenario in which Marc finds himself held captive by Bartel, whose grasp of reality erodes to a breaking point.
Calvaire’s greatest achievement is how well it balances charm with an aggressively downtrodden tone. Marc is gifted with the talent of song but doomed to perform at his own expense forever. Lucas plays the role like a Bob Fosse character: with all the glamour and drive in spite of the world around him. There is an undercurrent of nostalgia that runs throughout the film, punctuating moments of sadness and elevating the tension between characters. After the first number, an old woman enters Marc’s green room hoping to seduce him. She cites the intimacy of Marc’s performance and her own mortality as reasons for coming on strong, but she leaves disappointed and ashamed. This is a touching scene and one that is echoed to an excruciating degree later on.
If you know your genre material, you are constantly aware of where the story is headed. But knowing makes the film even harder to stomach. When we meet Bartel, the gracious inn owner who is adamant about helping Marc, our suspicions are immediately aroused. It doesn’t take long before Bartel's jealousy ends up confirming our worst fears about him. Berroyer plays the washed up comedian with a tragic undercurrent and is able to turn heel on a dime, exciting the fear and anxiety of the audience from scene to scene. The film is so menacing we barely notice the film does not utilize a musical score. Suddenly, Bartel’s behavior, an overwhelming feeling of isolation and a seemingly random instance of pig fucking all come to a head. Comparisons have been made to Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Calvaire does emulate the same black humor and progressive madness, most evidently in a dinner table scene towards the end that is as nauseating as the original while being a nearly shot-for-shot take. Like many European genre filmmakers of his generation, du Welz’s influences are both glaring and expertly remixed to service the story.
There is a chase through the woods that closely resembles the unforgiving rawness of The Last House On The Left. There are thematic nods to Deliverance and I Spit On Your Grave, as well as one particularly nasty overhead angle that pays homage to the finale of Taxi Driver. Marc is put through as much hell as the protagonist of a rape revenge film, and his repeated assault and emasculation underline Calvaire’s oppressive gender politics. That Marc is forced to wear a dress and treated as property by Bartel is a reflection of the kind of man who believes in domestication as a form of control. Though references to other films are laid on thick, nostalgia takes a poisonous form Calvaire. So much so that before the credits roll, it almost sheds its harsh exploitation roots by exposing the cruel men as being terminally entangled with the past. In this sense, beyond the obvious references, du Welz’s film is constructed like a backwoods Vertigo.
In horror, certain filmmakers return to settings that bear the weight of their personal and aesthetic concerns. Aside from the violent crimes committed there, the filmmaker is able to draw their audience’s attention to the horrors of a familiar place. For Fabrice du Welz, the Forest of Ardennes is host to his tortured imagination. His 2004 film Calvaire kicks off a spiritual trilogy of doomed romance and obsession set against a rural backdrop. As a Belgian filmmaker, approaches the idea of a forest that extends across multiple nations as a vortex of depravity no matter what side you land on. To call his worldview pessimistic would be doing a disservice to the term, though I believe du Welz is mostly a romantic at heart with mischievous tendencies. Translated literally to “the ordeal”, Calvaire is without question about intense suffering and pain. One bit of sacrilegious imagery stands out as being a little too on the nose with regards to those themes. And then it hits you that you’re watching a Christmas movie.
