Summary:
Vivarium is a fascinating story of science fiction and horror that simmers. His horror is Kafkaesque, methodical and muted. Its clear allegorical components do not constitute an objective or its "message", but an input saved from a certain obviousness by its dramatic crescendo (the great performance of Imogen Poots stands out), which works by accumulation and by the irruptions of the sinister and by its wonderful staging.
Review:
A young couple (she a teacher, he a gardener) go to a real estate agency looking for their first home. The employee in charge leads them to a housing estate to show them one. From there, both will live a nightmare.
This captivating film has two preludes short of one, which function as ominous epigraphs.
Nursery is a science fiction and horror story (in Danish-Belgian-Irish co-production) that simmers. His horror is Kafkaesque, methodical and muted. And I can't tell you anything about what its important science fiction component is.
The three fundamental pivots of a film of these genres coexist in harmony: the symbolic-allegorical, the dramatic and the formal. The first (which addresses the petty-bourgeois conjugal and family dream, with its ideal of order, alienation, the artificial, maternity and paternity and its Freudian connotations, among others) is rescued from a certain obviousness by the second, an implacable crescendo dramatic that works by trickle and accumulation (I don't understand the critics who object to the length of the film) and where the sinister looms.
It is not, then, the main intention of director Lorcan Finnegan to convey a "message", but instead inverts the equation by putting his themes at the service of his formal approach, with a wonderful staging: clinical, elegant, neat and therefore desperately Kafkaesque, accompanied by a magnificent soundtrack. That sober "geometric" elegance, with something artificial, and its calm tone reminds us of the films of Peter Strickland (In Fabric), Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin), David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) and, above all, Jessica Hausner (Little Joe). But his deliberate parsimony does not prevent the story from having an absolutely memorable climax.
The leading couple in charge of Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg gives humanity and dramatic thickness to their characters; their relative roles and importance throughout the film are coolly gauged by the script; no one is "wasted." Imogen Poots, in a great performance, once again proves to be the ideal actress to unite the cool, sensible and somewhat irreverent girl with the eventually primal, wild and tragic.
Vivarium is a fascinating story of science fiction and horror that simmers. His horror is Kafkaesque, methodical and muted. Its clear allegorical components do not constitute an objective or its "message", but an input saved from a certain obviousness by its dramatic crescendo (the great performance of Imogen Poots stands out), which works by accumulation and by the irruptions of the sinister and by its wonderful staging.
Review:
A young couple (she a teacher, he a gardener) go to a real estate agency looking for their first home. The employee in charge leads them to a housing estate to show them one. From there, both will live a nightmare.
This captivating film has two preludes short of one, which function as ominous epigraphs.
Nursery is a science fiction and horror story (in Danish-Belgian-Irish co-production) that simmers. His horror is Kafkaesque, methodical and muted. And I can't tell you anything about what its important science fiction component is.
The three fundamental pivots of a film of these genres coexist in harmony: the symbolic-allegorical, the dramatic and the formal. The first (which addresses the petty-bourgeois conjugal and family dream, with its ideal of order, alienation, the artificial, maternity and paternity and its Freudian connotations, among others) is rescued from a certain obviousness by the second, an implacable crescendo dramatic that works by trickle and accumulation (I don't understand the critics who object to the length of the film) and where the sinister looms.
It is not, then, the main intention of director Lorcan Finnegan to convey a "message", but instead inverts the equation by putting his themes at the service of his formal approach, with a wonderful staging: clinical, elegant, neat and therefore desperately Kafkaesque, accompanied by a magnificent soundtrack. That sober "geometric" elegance, with something artificial, and its calm tone reminds us of the films of Peter Strickland (In Fabric), Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin), David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) and, above all, Jessica Hausner (Little Joe). But his deliberate parsimony does not prevent the story from having an absolutely memorable climax.
The leading couple in charge of Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg gives humanity and dramatic thickness to their characters; their relative roles and importance throughout the film are coolly gauged by the script; no one is "wasted." Imogen Poots, in a great performance, once again proves to be the ideal actress to unite the cool, sensible and somewhat irreverent girl with the eventually primal, wild and tragic.