Taxidermia

Taxidermia, directed by Gyorgy Palfi, is visually and thematically grotesque. It's full of startling, transgressive images. (Even the original poster had to be obscured, though the poster used for the Cannes Film Festival premiere is uncensored.)

There are three sections, about three generations of men from the same family. Vendel is a soldier during World War II, a compulsive voyeur and fantasist. Vendel's son Kalman, an obese professional speed-eater, is the subject of the next segment. Kalman's son Lajoska, the taxidermist of the film's title, is the final subject.

The initial segment, concerning Vendel, is sensational. The tone is dark and unsettling, and the concepts (Vendel's unique pyromania in the film's opening scene, his corruption of the Little Matchstick Girl, and his lust for a dead pig) are original and provocative. This segment also begins with a diatribe on the phonology and usage of my favourite word (or at least, its Hungarian equivalent), and contains the film's most transgressive images (real sex and death, and ingenious frontal nudity).

Unfortunately, the disturbingly surreal atmosphere of the opening section is not sustained. The story of Kalman relies too much on unimaginative abjection, with copious vomiting and mastication during eating competitions. In the final section, Kalman has become a man-mountain resembling Jabba the Hutt (Star Wars) or Mr Creosote (Life Of Brian). Like the other fat speed-eaters of the middle segment, Kalman is finally more comical than shocking. However, at the very end, in the film's most disturbing scene, Lajoska disembowels himself with surgical precision and constructs a machine that decapitates him.

The film is bookended by images that will not be easily forgotten (the opening candle scene, and the closing self-disembowelment), and this is enough to make it a midnight movie classic in the tradition of the similarly surreal Eraserhead and the equally transgressive/grotesque Pink Flamingos.