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CANNES 2019 Directors’ Fortnight

Review: Wounds

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- CANNES 2019: Babak Anvari’s shocking body horror uses the tools of David Cronenberg to show that the biggest demons are those from within

Review: Wounds
Dakota Johnson and Armie Hammer in Wounds

There are cockroaches everywhere in Babak Anvari’Wounds [+see also:
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, a film controversially selected for the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight following its purchase by Netflix, making it the only work at Cannes to be pre-bought to play on the VoD platform in France after the festival without a theatrical release. Set in New Orleans, it’s a body horror based on Nathan Ballingrud’s unsettling novella The Visible Filth, starring Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson as Will and Carrie, a couple whose relationship is in big trouble. Will is a stand-up guy tending the bar at Rosie’s, handling violent customers who seem to agree with Trainspotting character Begbie’s view that a night out drinking isn’t complete without smashing someone’s face in or wrecking the venue itself. The eerie sounds and on-edge nature of the customers immediately make it clear that this is a dystopian world, even if the threat is initially not that obvious. 

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Wounds is a movie where the symbols, rather than the simple, almost non-existent plot, are most important and in which the antagonist creeps up on the viewer like a cat hunting a mouse. The most literal symbol is that wounds are a portal into another world, an inner world, where the demons from within come out to haunt us. As we get to know Will, his foibles become apparent. Despite his girlfriend at home, he’s become infatuated with one of his regular customers, Alicia (Zazie Beetz). But according to Anvari’s vision, the biggest danger comes not from the menace around us, but that found in the secrets we impart to our smartphones. Four students enter the bar, and after a fracas, a phone is left on the ground. What Will sees on it, from panicked text messages to strange videos, sends his life into a spiral. The homage to David Cronenberg in the style and design of the movie is so strong that it’s almost a surprise that the Canadian body-horror master isn’t the one sending the messages.

Anvari would have done well to spend as much effort on the narrative as he has on the production design, a mix of CGI and in-camera effects. It is a messy film because it’s unclear what it’s about for much of the time. A lot is going on, from the text messages to the failing relationship with Carrie, via the crass pursuit of Alicia, alcoholism, the wounds appearing on faces and the cockroaches, as well as smartphones being the source of discontent, but all of these ideas go nowhere because, in the end, Anvari is more interested in deconstructing Will, who turns out not to be the nice guy that he seems at the start. Yet the problem with this approach is that Anvari ventures down this path without creating any empathy for Will or his downfall. It’s a brave attempt by the helmer to make a bigger, more shocking film than his acclaimed Persian-language debut, Under the Shadow [+see also:
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, and in fairness, it does have a terrific finale, but it’s not one that can stitch up all of the loose, bleeding ends.

Wounds is an Annapurna Pictures (USA) presentation of a Two & Two Pictures (UK) and AZA Films (USA) production.

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