seen Wednesday 6th December:

TAXIDERMIA
[5/10] : Hungary 2006 : PALFI Gyorgy : 91m
Palfi's 2002 debut Hukkle was one of the most distinctive, original and promising first features by a European director in the last few years. Unfortunately the praise seems to have gone to the young auteur's head: his follow-up Taxidermia - a kind of 'arthouse gross-out' which has caused a stir on the film-festival circuit since premiering at Cannes back in May - shows many classic signs of sophomore overreach. 
   Palfi's talent is beyond question: there are many virtuouso sequences here which display a striking mastery of image and sound; but he's so aggressively determined to elicit the most of extreme reactions from his viewers that bemused indifference seems the most sensible response.
   Reportedly based on short stories by Nagy Lajos (in Hungary, surnames always come first), Palfi's script is a tripartite affair spanning various stages of recent Hungarian history: prologue set in what looks like wartime; a long middle section taking place during the Communist period; longish present-day climax.
   The connecting element is Balatony Kalman (Trocsanyi Gergely), a champion in the (mercifully-fictional) pursuit of "sport eating." We see the unusual circumstances of his birth (conception took place on a vat above a dismembered pig; the child was born with a porcine-curly tail); observe him in his prime at a multi-national 'Spartakiad' event (the 'rounds' interspersed by some energetic large-volume vomiting sessions); see the bulky chap romance the similarly generously-proportioned Gizi (Stanczel Adel).
   The final section focuses on the fruit of Kalman and Gizi's union: the incongruously-spindly Lajos (German actor Marc Bischoff), whose animal-stuffing profession provides the film with its enigmatic title. By the time Lajos has reached adulthood, his father has ballooned to colossal, immobile obesity - long since abandoned by his wife and unable to move or fend for himself, he wolfs down dozens of chocolate bars each day without bothering to remove the wrapping.
   This very conspicuous consumption is merely one among countless elements of a film very specifically designed to disgust, appall and repel. But the overall tone is too stylised, too blackly comic, to be properly disturbing. In addition, Palfi is clearly working through some kind of allegory involving Communism and capitalism - not to mention his own private obsessions and neuroses.
   Along with his behind-the-scenes collaborators, he gives Taxidermia a notably strong unifying aesthetic: all swooping camerawork, intense closeups, a carefully-modulated colour palette, and some terrific little grace-notes (watch for those leaping fish!) all placed at the service of a baroque, satirical surrealism. But - unlike his omnivorous protagonist Kalman - Palfi has bitten off rather more than he can chew here, and the film ends up too much of a self-indulgent, sub-Gaspar-Noe, ultimately rather banal parade of gratuitous grotesqueries to provide us with any real food for thought. To sum up: stuff and nonsense.

Neil Young



nb : all timings are from film-festival catalogue.

Taxidermia seen at Kinomaja (press show)