MUERE, MONSTRUO, MUERE (2018)

Argentina-France-Chile. Direction: Alejandro Fadel. Production: Agustina Llambi Campbell, Alejandro Fadel, Fernando Brom, Julie Gayet, Antoun Sehnaoui, Nadia Turincev, Jean Raymond Garcia, Benjamin Delaux, Édouard Lacoste, Dominga Sotomayor, Omar Zúñiga / La Unión de los Ríos, Rouge International, Uproduction, Cinestación, Frutacine. Screenplay: Alejandro Fadel. Photography: Julián Apezteguía, Manuel Rebella. Music: Álex Nante. Edition: Andrés P. Estrada. Cast: Víctor Lopez, Esteban Bigliardi, Tania Casciani, Romina Iniesta, Sofía Palomino. Running time: 109 min

LANGUAGE: Spanish

It was celebrated at Cannes, placing its author, the Alejandro Fadel of Los salvajes (2012), up there on the same alter as Lynch and Del Toro, but many of them forgot to quote Escalante and his The Untamed (2016), with which Muere, monstruo, muere has a great deal in common, even if they don’t actually look much like one another. Populated by lugubrious grime-caked characters; located in a rough, burning hot, dusty and unhealthy landscape, eccentric to the extreme, with lighting in the sweaty darkness provided by two wizards of movie photography, Rebella and Apezteguía, at absolutely no time does the spectator doubt that it’s here and nowhere else that a lecherous head-cutting monster may feel perfectly at home. The first scene, memorable.