I really wanted to like this movie, it had so many things going in the right direction in the beginning. There was many real beautiful camera shots, the atmosphere created with minimal use of music and some pretty strange scenes was ... lets say "different". After a nice opening with love-songs in a retirement home and everyone falling in love with him, singer Marc drives off to just another show at Christmas. Bad luck for him his car breaks down somewhere in the Belgian woods and he soon meets a strange guy seeking his dog. He is led to a motel lead by a nice old guy named Bartel, who just likes Marcs singing a bit too much. So here the Hillbilly-Story starts that gave this movie so many "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"-comparisons. I think that comparison is pretty stupid... its more like "Misery" meets "Wrong Turn" and since the inbred town folk are not quite depicted as plain evil but rather poor creatures who have too few women and too many pigs around even "Wrong Turn" is just a loose description for the "lost in the woods" story.
It starts off nice, leads to some real strange scenes of the degenerated town-folk "dancing" in a bar but then gets way too artsy and strange. The whole plot seems too far fetched, there is no explanation for the delusion of all town-folk who see Marc as Gloria and although the ending has some nice scenes with sound-effect driven atmosphere its a total let down.
So who is Glora? The crucified mummy in the swamps?? Honestly I don't care since the movie left this door so wide open you could speculate for ages. So after 80 minutes Calvaire is pretty much a big disappointment. If its just a giant plot-hole or massaging your imagination, you decide... but don't expect anything like TCM.
It starts off nice, leads to some real strange scenes of the degenerated town-folk "dancing" in a bar but then gets way too artsy and strange. The whole plot seems too far fetched, there is no explanation for the delusion of all town-folk who see Marc as Gloria and although the ending has some nice scenes with sound-effect driven atmosphere its a total let down.
So who is Glora? The crucified mummy in the swamps?? Honestly I don't care since the movie left this door so wide open you could speculate for ages. So after 80 minutes Calvaire is pretty much a big disappointment. If its just a giant plot-hole or massaging your imagination, you decide... but don't expect anything like TCM.