Carnage
Reviewed by Lee Shoquist for Reel Movie Critic

HH

123 Minutes; Not Rated; Violence, Nudity, Profanity;French, Italian and Spanish with English Subtitles

When a matador is gored during a bullfight, the animal is slain and its dismembered body parts end up all over Europe as permanent fixtures in the lives of several odd characters. An unfaithful scientist with a pregnant wife examines the eyes; the bones go to a struggling actress and are transferred to a beloved family pet; the meat to a mother with a dark secret; the horns to an eccentric taxidermist and his live-in mother. The various characters intersect in all the now-familiar ways of sprawling ensemble pictures and by the conclusion of the film, truths have been discovered, lives altered and secrets revealed.

Carnage, with its elegant lighting scheme and scope framing, initially begins as a seductive, sleek mystery. But it's soon apparent that the dressed-up technique has been created in service of a thoroughly bizarre and uninvolving story, populated with two-dimensional characters and relying on a half-baked premise that never evolves to fruition.

Carnage is composed of a load of plot contrivances and disconnected threads that fail to come together in any meaningful way. These ironic, overlapping ensemble films have become the latest international cinema "it" device - no doubt spurred on by the success of masterful films like Short Cuts and Magnolia.

But it takes a very sure director to handle so many characters and give them their due - and in Carnage, the characters all serve a self-indulgence that strives for the genius tone of Atom Egoyan, but comes off like something out of Directing 101.

On a technical level, Carnage is accomplished and manages to be inviting to the eye even though it remains a narrative shortfall. The performances are competent, with Chiara Mastoianni fairing the best as a struggling actress obsessed with her body image and committed to finding her "primal scream." In a failed drama like Carnage, featuring a company of actors, you have to imagine whether any one of the characters would be worth seeing in his or her own film. If you can't imagine any of them sustaining your interest, you begin to understand the difference between an editing exercise and a fine ensemble drama.