Showing @ Cineworld, Glasgow, Fri 28 Feb & Sat 01 Mar

Alex van Warmerdam / Netherlands/Belgium / 2013 / 113 mins

Just like Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s new television project Inside No. 9, writer/director Alex van Warmerdam finds humour in the ominous and creepy in this black comedy. Wandering tramp Camiel Borgman (Jan Bijvoet), aided by his cohort of menacing companions, infiltrates the good graces of Marina (Hadewych Minis) – the frustrated housewife of an affluent but haughty family. Although Camiel’s intentions at first appear innocent, it’s not long before a more nefarious agenda is revealed.

From the first scene, in which a shotgun-toting preacher hunts for the reclusive vagrant in his underground lair in the woods, Warmerdam sets up his story as being based in reality but with one toe dipped in surrealism. Because these strange elements (the pair of greyhounds, the naked squatting) are kept tantalisingly within the bounds of realism, they give the film a dark but amusing peculiarity. Moments of violence are enacted with such straight-faced banality they exaggerate the hilarity in the horror. By placing the shabby and grimy Camiel in Marina’s sleek and gleaming home, Warmerdam highlights the vast gap between rich and poor and the husband’s fatuous actions: dismissing prospective gardeners on their skin colour or brutally attacking the defenceless Borgman, emphasises this “us and them” divide. Borgman is a sinister but immensely funny movie that will stir your inner social conscience.

Showing as part of the Glasgow Film Festival 2014