From the very first frame, it becomes apparent that director
Manuel Martín Cuenca’s “Cannibal” is a movie in no hurry to get anywhere. An
extended wide shot watches a couple from a great distance. They fill up their
tank, smoke a cigarette, and generally take their sweet ass time before moving
on. This doesn’t mean “Cannibal” is slow, simply deliberate and measured. Eventually
in this lengthy take, you come to realize that you’re sharing a character’s
gaze. As the target car finally moves on, revealing that you’ve been watching
from inside another vehicle. Placing you in the still unknown person’s point of
view makes you implicit in what comes next—the stalking, killing, and
butchering of a human being—and serves to unsettle you, a feeling that never
goes away.
Carlos (Antonio de la Torre, “The Last Circus”), the most
well regarded tailor in all of Granada, has some serious issues with the
opposite sex. So serious, in fact, that the women he most desires, he kills and
eats. “Cannibal” never tries to get into the why of the matter, though there
are oblique hints that it could something to do with his mother, or possibly a
relationship gone horribly wrong. It’s hard to imagine a break up so bad that
you want to eat people, but still.
When a new neighbor, Alexandra (Olimpia Melinte), moves in,
it complicates his quiet, withdrawn life. Carlos barely speaks. In fact, the
first ten minutes of the film he never utters a word, and eventually when he
does prove to you that he is not a mute, most of his dialogue is small talk and
pleasantries. Alexandra, on the other hand, is vivacious, outgoing, loud,
passionate, and everything Carlos it not. After a nasty sounding fight in her
apartment, she goes missing, and her mousy sister, Nina (also Melinte, but with
her hair dyed brown), arrives to try to track her down.
What “Canibal” does best is to let you draw your own
conclusions. Though you suspect, you’re never sure if Carlos has anything to do
with Alexandra’s disappearance. As he and Nina gradually grow closer and closer,
you can’t help but wonder what his intentions are. You feel like he may be
thawing, opening himself up to maybe the first earnest human connection he’s
ever had in life. Nina challenges Carlos’ removed approach to the world, you
see he wants to reach out, but he doesn’t know how. At the same time, you can
never shake the feeling that he’s hunting, stalking a victim like he has so
many times before, cold, precise, deadly.
If you cut two or three scenes out of the movie, what you
would be left with is a strange romance brewing between two closed off,
guarded, wounded individuals. There’d be no instance to even wonder about
Carlos’ dietary peculiarities. Sure, he’s a weirdo, but accusing someone of
eating people is a bit of a reach. This film is a minimalistic mystery thriller
with an unusual romance that just so happens to exist under the black cloud of
cannibalism the changes the color of everything else. Never being sure what he
is going to do, what he is really capable of, infuses every scene, every movement
with an inherent tension. When he reaches out you always wonder if it is an
embrace, a gesture of affection, or if he is going to snap her neck and sauté
for dinner. Is he moving towards the light, or does it just appear that way?
“Cannibal” is not your run of the mill human-flesh-eating
film, more a slow burn thriller than exploitation style horror. Though that
element casts a long shadow over everything else, there is so much more going
on. Not the result of some trauma, Carlos actions are more interesting than
whatever contrived origin they could have inserted. Director Cuenca is content
to explore the here and now, draw comparisons to the holy sacrament, and leave
that part of his character’s past a mystery.
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