Quesnel Film Club presents the last film in its winter series, Carnage April 5, 6:30 p.m. at the Carib Theatre.
Director Roman Polanski returns with Carnage, a caustic and witty new film which is an adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s 2009 Tony-winning play God of Carnage and features Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz. Carnage is a captivating and explosively comic study in the tension between civilized surface and savage instinct.
Set in contemporary Brooklyn, Carnage centres on two couples who meet to discuss a playground fight between two of their children. Harried corporate lawyer Alan and his put-upon wife Nancy, a successful broker, visit the apartment of Michael, an amiable wholesaler and Penelope, a self-consciously liberal writer, to discuss, logically and amiably, how to deal with the boys. However, as the evening wears on, the parents become increasingly childish and combative, words become weapons, prejudices rise to the surface and the meeting soon collapses into a storm of anger, recriminations, drunkenness and violence.
Unfolding in real time, Polanski nimbly keeps the action flowing with an active camera that avoids the feeling of a play captured on film. Instead, its single-set confinement (the story essentially takes place over 80 minutes, in one location) recalls Polanski’s similarly claustrophobic studies of urban alienation and psychic disintegration in Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant. It is also a master class in acting and it’s pure pleasure to watch the thespians one-upmanship as each character strives to dominate a deteriorating scenario.
Carnage is ultimately a dark comedy about losing one’s manners. Alternately uproarious and devastating, it convincingly lays bare the darker tendencies of human nature.
Tickets for Carnage are $9 (adult) and $7 (seniors) which includes film club memberships. For information call 250-747-7422 or 250-747-3979 or visit www.quesnelfilmclub.ca.