Our second round-up of films at Glasgow Film Festival have nothing in common other than the distinctiveness of their individual visions. The trio feature deranged games, gothic horror, and challenging social satire, but this gives little clue to the weirdness on offer.
An unhinged tattooist and a spoiled pop star engage in a bizarre battle of wills with catastrophic consequences in Tummy Monster (Ciaran Lyons/ UK/ 2024/ 85 mins). Lorn Macdonald goes entertainingly off the rails as Tales, who answers the phone late at night to a man called Truth (Michael Akinsilure). Truth’s client Tummy (Orlando Norman) is after some late night ink, and Tales obliges. Tales asks Tummy for a selfie for his daughter, and Tummy very much fails to oblige. This leads to an interminable game that seems to suck in everything around them.
Ciaran Lyons’ debut is as high-concept as it gets, based almost entirely around the endless repetition of the phrase, ‘Rub your tummy, or I’ll think you’re an asshole’. It’s messy, uneven, and threatens to run out of steam on a number of occasions. Yet Lyons and the actors always find another gear and another crisis to pile on the luckless Tales. In the end Tummy Monster becomes an almost ritualistic experience, and there’s a definite whiff of something unworldly and Mephistophelean about Tummy, although the outcomes for Tales are ultimately terrestrial. Tummy Monster is almost the definition of ‘not for everyone’, but it is like nothing else you’ll see. 3/5
The story of The Vourdalak (Adrian Beau/ France/ 2023/ 91 mins) will be familiar to anyone who has seen Mario Bava‘s Black Sabbath. A vampire story by Aleksey Tolstoy that predates Dracula by 50 years, it centres on an 18th century French nobleman who is taken in by a family of Eastern European peasants after he’s robbed by the sae marauding Turks who have been raiding the countryside. He arrives just in time for the family patriarch returning form fighting those Turks as a Vourdalak, a ghoul that prefers to prey on the blood of their loved ones.
Adrian Beau’s adaptation of the story is a highly stylised affair full of bold decisions. It’s grainy surrealism makes it feel like the woozy, arty schlock of Jean Rollin, and there is much gender fluid flirting between effete, powdered and bewigged aristocrat (Kasey Mottet Klein), two of the family’s children, haughty daughter Sdenka (Ariane Labed), and crossdressing Piotr (Vassili Schneider). But by far the most startling choice is in Beau’s use of a macabre animatronic puppet for the Vourdalak itself. Whether is entirely works will rest entirely with the viewer, but there’s a weird joy in watching the rest of the cast interact with – in increasingly mad ways – the creature. Beyond the unique charm, there’s a lot going on about abusive families and the sins of the father. A singular curio. 3/5
To complete a triptych of unique visions is the latest from Radu Jude, one of the most challenging cinematic voices today. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Romania, Luxembourg, France, Croatia/ 2023/ 163 mins) is a near three-hour satirical swipe at practically every aspect of Romanian culture. Ilinca Manolache plays Angela, a gig economy gofer for a media company tasked with finding the new face of a safety video from a number of people handicapped in work accidents. Jude intersperses the grainy black and white aesthetic of the contemporary period with scenes from a Ceaușescu-era film called Angela Keeps Going, about a female taxi driver. The two films appear to take place in the same universe as actress Dorina Lazar pops up as Angela again, talking about her past career and enjoying the parallels between her and her younger namesake.
Generally, the thesis appears to be that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The freedoms that Romanian citizens have since the fall of Communism are illusory and the average Romanian worker still labours under a similar yoke. Taking in snipes at everything from Andrew Tate-like social media misogyny, Zoom calls, late-stage capitalism, and the casual racism against its Romany population. It’s all done in Jude’s signature radical and rude style, full of non sequiturs and discursive tangents. It’s frequently very funny, often frustrating, and way, way too long. If you’re familiar with Jude’s work, you’ll know what to expect and Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is not going to change the minds of either his champions or his detractors. 3/5
Tummy Monster receives its World Premiere Sat 2 Mar, and also screens Sun 3 Mar and Thu 7 Mar 2024
The Vourdalak receives its UK Premiere on Sun 3 Mar and also screens Mon 4 Mar 2024
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World received its Scottish Premiere as part of the Glasgow Film Festival