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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Horror from Belgium. For director Fabrice Du Welz, making Calvaire (The Ordeal) was not so much about tricking the audience as pulling a fast one on Hollywood conventions. The spooky creepfest, his debut feature, sees pretty singer Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas) stranded in the countryside and brutally kidnapped by psychotic hotel owner Bartel (Jackie Berroyer), after he mistakes him for his wife Gloria, who ditched him a while ago. As it transpires, with very good reason. All this before he’s even met the villagers; a motley crew of inbred, sexually deviant freaks.  There are the obligatory nods to films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Straw Dogs and Deliverance, but if cinema-goers are expecting a low-budget European rip-off of Rob Reiner’s Misery then they’ll be sorely disappointed. There are no action-fuelled heroics and, despite Stevens’ attempts to escape, he remains a strangely passive creature, dissolving into fits of tears at Bartel’s increasingly violent measures to keep him from leaving. “F**k Hollywood, you know,” says the outspoken Belgian director. “I want to make horror films the way I want, and for me Calvaire had no payoff, no twist at the end, and it’s not a rollercoaster.”  As a French co-production, Calvaire has found itself lumped together with other Gallic films of a similar psychologically disturbing bent, including Haute Tension, Innocence, and Dans Ma Peau (In My Skin), which also starred Lucas. It even shares an actor (Philippe Nahon) and director of photography (Benoît Debie) with Gaspar Noé’s controversial Irréversible. But Du Welz looks at this notion of a French New Wave as something overlooked in the country itself. “We don’t have much consideration in France by the critics,” he says bluntly, and whilst they may be unappreciative Du Welz is unruffled. “What I intend to do with Calvaire is stay with the audience,” he explains. And the film’s grubby atmospheric imprint is certainly one that’s hard to remove after viewing.
Ann Lee
Calvaire, on selected release 09 December 05.
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