"I call this one BREAKFAST," says the artist, pointing to a painting of cartoon demons and football players cutting off each others' genitalia and eating them with blobs of poop, "because it's the most important meal of the day."
SEPTIEN is definitely a one-of-a-kind. Its stark Gothic mood with brooding characters and thick tension make you feel like it's heading for a tragedy of Greek proportions. Its heavy pacing and suspenseful presentation (never quite explaining who anyone is until the very end) make you think it's a thriller or even a ghost story. Each & every character is heading for a nervous breakdown. Nobody smiles, ever.
It's hard to believe that this is a comedy, but I can't describe it any other way.
In the same way Tarantino and the Coen Brothers make hyper-violent, disturbing films that make us laugh, here we have a similar approach but without all the violence. The film carries the mood by using haunting images, hints of some dark trauma, and above all: secrets, secrets, secrets. This is brilliant mood-filmmaking at its best, folks.
Now throw into the mix some of the most bizarre characters you've ever seen. An odd bearded man who returns to his family after 18 years and who makes a living by doing strange things in the park. A brother who paints--as one character describes--"people cutting off their wee-wees and eating poop". A man who cooks & cleans like June Cleaver on crack. A creepy old guy and a very young, attractive girl whom he introduces only as "she's not my daughter!" A mysterious dude who spends the first half of the movie walking around with a briefcase. And a mentally-challenged kid who lives in a tire and seems to be the only sane person of the bunch.
What follows is the slow yet electrifying unravelling of secrets. Piece by piece we put together the jigsaw puzzle of what these people are all about. We make assumptions. Nothing is known for sure until the last 15 minutes when we get one of the most "wtf" climaxes and resolutions in the history of cinema.
I enjoyed this movie from the beginning, but it was that crazy ending that made me a fan. It's as if all the suspense, tension and weirdness that had been building up for the first 70 minutes just explodes in a dazzling display of fireworks. It will either leave you feeling totally satisfied or in need of some jumper cables to revive your brain. Either way, this is an experience that shouldn't be missed.
