Manuel Martin Cuenca is a little-known Spanish director who has produced few movies, but it is still unconventional. His film "Cannibal Love", which premiered in Canada last year, may become a gap for Chinese audiences to know him, but based on the topic alone, such a gap is not enough to satisfy audiences from his films. Now that entertainment is paramount, movie fans pay more attention to Hollywood comic heroes, as for works with serious and weird themes, they may not pay attention to them.
"Cannibal Love" tells the story of cannibalism falling in love with ordinary women. The life of a man who is different from ordinary people makes him wrap himself in a hard shell. The attitude to life remains unchanged. Don't let anyone disrupt the rhythm of his life, stay away from all the pleasures of society, pale and lonely, but the elegant and sinister man just jumped in front of the screen.
In order to make everything lively enough, the director deliberately slowed down the rhythm of the film and enlarged many trivial details of life. As a result, the actor Carlos under the director's lens became lifelike. Actor Antonio de la Torre is a good and responsible actor. The character of Carlos is lonely and eccentric, but he wants to hide his true self. Therefore, although there are different performances on different occasions, the differences are not particularly significant. It is not easy for an actor to grasp the small differences in the details and express them completely. Antonio de la Torre can do it, which shows his dedication to the role.
There is also the director who is also attentive. From the gas station in the dark night at the beginning to Carlos who returns to the dark at the end of the film, the director puts huge constraints on the characters. Through the clever use of light and shadow, the design of the characters' body language, the depth of field Conceived and other details to express the pitiful and terrible inner world of a lonely person who hides a huge darkness. Through this contradictory and tangled character modeling, what the director wants to express is nothing more than an understanding of the unspeakable pain of loners.
Cannibals don't really exist, they're just a form created by the director. Those people who are addicted to loneliness and cannot extricate themselves all have a dark side that is difficult to expose to the sun and cannot be understood by others. They don't believe that the world can tolerate them, and naturally they can't take the step of letting go of the bondage, just like Nina's sacrifice near the end of the film and no response from Carlos. This person who has long been accustomed to protecting himself with loneliness finally did not have the courage to take that brave step. The director's sympathy ends with tragedy, in order to give the lonely person a completely pessimistic ending.
At this point, I want to give a judgment on the movie. There is no tension-filled plot, no particularly distinctive characters, but it is full of meticulous life trivia. Can the audience really eat this? In Spain, in Canada, or even all over Europe, this shouldn't be a question for audiences about the film. Pictures full of literary and artistic flavor have never been rejected by Europeans. On the contrary, in China, works that are too literary and artistic can only be a weapon for niche fans to show their accent.
"Cannibal Love" meets the needs and characteristics of niche fans to a certain extent, but on a larger level, this film lacks the vitality of the plot, which is the crux of its inability to capture the audience. In 2014, the film was nominated for many nominations for the Spanish Goya Award, but in the end it only won the Best Cinematography Award, and it has not been seen in other film festivals. It can be seen that for sentimental audiences, the plot Still king.
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