"Surrealist tragicomedy horror" is not a genre I generally opt for, but the cast--headed by Joaquin Phoenix and Patti LuPone--was enough of lure to get me to drop my qualms. We were right about the excellent performances--and the iffy premise.
https://a24films.com/films/beau-is-afraid
No recommendation.
As we've come to expect, the small independent films shown nearby are not only relegated to the small screening rooms but also to marginal, take-it-or-leave-it, time slots. So today, we stopped midday to see one of the last showings of R.M.N. We made a good decision.
Set in a Romanian village--that has variously been under the thumbs of the Hapsburgs, the Huns, Russia, the Soviet Union, and now the EU--the film explores the ironies and paradoxes of a globalized workforce where the locals travel west for jobs and (in this case) Sri Lankans make their western journey to take the jobs the locals have abandoned. As quickly as this polyglot community shifts from one language to another, it also turns against the factory employing the outsiders.
In a 15-minute scene, we listen to the community's vitriol (often nonsensical, always familar) against the bakery owner and her foreign workers, figures whom the locals have transformed into synecdoches for the system that's abused and overwhelmed them all. The camera never moves. In the lower right corner, almost off screen, the bakery owner fidgets uncomfortably. Nearby, her manager is being harassed by one of the village ring-leaders; she fears shunning him lest he cause a ruckus.
What the young boy sees in the opening scene (we later learn it's a man hanging from a tree) and what we see in the closing scene (wild bears hovering outside the manager's home)--these frame the film and contribute to its foreboding sense of powerlessness.
Highly recommend.
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