Nights of Horror: Calvaire
Sometime in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while the US was experiencing a rise in what nowadays we call “torture porn,” western Europe and more specifically, France, was birthing a genre unlike anything anyone had ever seen.
The New French Extremity movement is categorized by its unflinching graphic brutality. It is inventive, challenging, and visceral horror (and horror adjacent) cinema, with plot structures and twists that often leave the audience frustrated, emotionally exhausted, and questioning their philosophy for days, sometimes years after experiencing a film. Directors like Alexandre Aja, Pascal Laugier, Gaspar Noé, and tonight’s director, Fabrice du Welz (who is Belgian but who’s counting), dragged audiences kicking and screaming into gritty underworlds inhabited by the dregs of society from city scumbags to backwoods degenerates, pried eyes open to gaze upon the filth, and somehow managed to avoid making it look exploitative or cheap. These subjects are treated with cruelty, with guttural suffering for the sake of suffering, but never without dignity. And this is what separates New French Extremity from American Torture Porn. Torture porn is violent for the sake of violence. New French Extremity is ABOUT violence, and the toll it takes on everyone from the perpetrators of said violence, to the recipients and everyone they know, and the societal ripples caused by the infliction of pain.
2004 saw multiple serial killers in France and Belgium finally being brought to justice after years of terrorizing the countryside, for example killer couple Michel Fourniret and his wife Monique Olivier, and rapist/child murderer Marc Dutroux. Being raised in North America, I have been naturally conditioned to fear every stranger as a potential predator and to treat that fear as a gift. But rural France, Belgium, Switzerland, etc, these places that still have literal self-sustained peasant towns with no light pollution at night, a serial killer was big fucking news and a game changer. Filmmakers who grew up watching fare like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and Deliverance, saw an opportunity to tackle their countrymen’s new concerns with a Euro flair.
The New French Extremity movement, like every movement that reflects the society from whence it is birthed, plays on the fears of isolated countryside and the batshit folks that reside there, with iconic films like Haute Tension, Frontier(s), and 2004’s Calvaire, which I watched yesterday morning and have been thinking about ever since.
Calvaire, French for Calvary, is also known by its English title as The Ordeal. And boy, is it ever. I’m going to spoil the fuck out of it so if you haven’t seen it and want to, put a pin in this and come back later.
Marc is a lounge-style entertainer who lives out of his van and makes a living performing at weddings, events, and retirement homes. Our story begins with one of these nursing home performances, with him performing rather tame, yet upbeat love songs for an audience of attention-starved old ladies. He is accosted in his dressing room after the performance by a thirsty audience member who throws herself at him, hoping for a hookup, which he refuses. This moment sets the tone for the movie, in which Marc is presented as a passive object of desire, and very objectified in the way a woman would be in any classical horror film. (Indeed, if you took this movie and made Marc a woman, nothing that happens going forward would be half as shocking.) In any case, this woman takes the rejection hard, smacking herself and calling herself as a stupid slut. She punishes herself for desiring him.
Another uncomfortable moment, in which a woman asks permission to hug him but them hugs him just a little bit too long, hits me right where I live as a performer. You pour yourself out onstage, and suddenly people think they know you. And moreover, they think that because you connected with them from the stage, that they are entitled to a piece of you. Just like Flight of the Conchords say "A Kiss is Not A Contract," a bit of prolonged eye contact is not a promise to hook up after the show. That costs extra.
It is Christmastime, and Marc is headed to what is potentially his biggest gig yet when his van breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, thanks to a weird little bumpkin he meets on the road called Boris (who can’t find his dog Bella), he learns he’s about 3 km from a small inn, owned by a man called Bartel. Bartel’s inn is no longer in business, but what do you know, it’s Christmastime, of course there’s room at the inn. Bartel even promises to fix Marc’s van and help him get back on the road, seeing as how he has a special place in his heart for entertainers. He used to be a comedian, you see. But he lost his sense of humor when his beloved and much-worshipped wife, Gloria, left and took all the joy out of the world. She was a singer too, like Marc. It’s at this point where we start to get the heebie jeebies.
Bartel is fixated on his wife, and overly attentive to Marc in a way that is invasive and possessive almost immediately, warning him to stay away from the village. Marc avoids the village, but still manages to stumble across a farm where a bunch of hicks are enthusiastically encouraging a teenage boy as he mouthfucks a newly born calf. Instead of getting shot, Marc minds his own fucking business and heads back to the inn, hoping his van is fixed.
Bartel has actually done nothing but dig through all of Marc’s shit, finding and keeping the cute little love tokens given to him by horny fans. Marc confronts him, and Bartel cracks him across the skull hard enough to knock him out, I mean real bad, our guy is concussed to fuck for the duration of the movie so I kept this in mind for everything going forward. Why does he moan so much? He’s got a head injury. Why does he cry so much? Head injury. Why is he dry heaving? Head injury.
He’s also got a beat-to-fuck, totally trashed, kerosene soaked, burned out husk of a van. And a brand new dress. And a new name.
Marc, now christened Gloria, wakes up tied to a chair, covered in blood that has been gushing from his head for some time. He weeps openly as Bartel badly shaves half his head, saying he doesn’t WANT to make him ugly, but it’s for his own protection. But he’s so so happy to have Gloria home. And she’ll never go away again, will she?
Bartel goes into the village and tells all the men that Gloria has returned, and they better leave her alone this time. It’s possible that Gloria, and we’re operating on the idea that she ever existed in the first place, was very popular in this village. She would have been the reason to go to the inn, if ya know what I mean. Without her, there are no women in this village. This is the exact opposite of the nursing home situation. That was a bunch of thirsty grandmas, this is a bunch of stinky hive-minded farmers who barely speak, but function as a single unit. After Bartel leaves the pub (?), there is a very disturbing and graceless dance scene, partnerless men dancing with one another but not touching, that resembles more of a disjointed haka than a polka with hammered piano music that I will never forget, that I kiiiiiiiinda want to choreograph a burlesque routine to. It’s such a creepy, hyper masculine scene, of men who desperately need women, and are fucked up half-things without a feminine energy around.
Meanwhile back at the inn, every escape attempt by Marc is thwarted by Bartel, who easily catches up to him (head injury) and one point crucifies him to make him stay put. I mean, it IS Christmas. (Sidebar: Calvaire, Calvary, is another term for Golgotha, which is where Christ was crucified… I like to tell people I’m not a Catholic, but I speak it, LOL!)
Boris shows up during Christmas Eve dinner, having found Bella. The very same baby calf we saw getting mouthfucked by rednecks earlier. Not a dog. But then, Marc isn’t Gloria and good luck explaining that to Bartel. So everybody here is just absolutely delusional except for Marc, who is too concussed to function, bless his heart and all the weakly written love songs in it.
Of course, lest we forget, he is an object, here to be objectified, and punished for being the object of desire. When women desire him, they punish themselves. But when men desire him, he is punished. And he just… takes it. He even manages to feed himself a little Christmas dinner. It’s hard to, because having nails driven through your wrists tends to fuck with tendon function, but he tries. And Bartel BEAMS.
Bartel really is the heart of this movie, sad to say, he is so tenderhearted, he loves so deeply, he just has a really fucked up dumb-shit way of showing it, and he is just so happy to have his wife back that it’s almost sad when their quiet teary-eyed Christmas dinner is interrupted by all the men from the village busting into the inn, ready to steal Gloria for themselves. They kill Boris and Bartel, they kick the calf and briefly rape Marc before he’s able to escape after a close quarter rifle mishap. (This intensely violent sequence was masterfully shot by Benoît Debie, who was the cinematographer for Irréversible, a film Roger Ebert called “so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable.”)
On the run from a group of villagers led by Robert (eagle-eyed viewers will recognize Philippe Nahon, star of French horror thrillers I Stand Alone, Humains, Haute Tension, Carne, and Irréversible. He’s basically the boogeyman of France. Or at least he was, until he died from complications related to Covid-19. RIP), Marc is pursued through the forest, across a valley, across a frigid river (in a SUMMER DRESS), by these hayseeds and their hunting pig, who will not stop shrieking. This pig, and the sounds of it, are so fucking haunting. His handler is telling him to “find the slut,” while he shrieks as if he’s being murdered, but happily trotting as if he’s hunting truffles, it’s just awful on the senses.
Gradually, all these man fall away save for Robert, who is revealed to have had an affair with Gloria when he falls into a sinkhole and becomes stuck. Marc, beaten and broken, shivering, turns to watch Robert sink slowly into the ground. Robert begs Gloria, to tell him if she ever really loved him back, and Marc answers, as Gloria, that yes, she did. Robert weeps tears of joy as he’s sucked under the freezing mud, leaving Marc to an uncertain future in a snowy forest, wearing nothing but a sundress and a windbreaker. I would have stolen Robert’s hat at least, half shaved head, temperatures dropping, shiiiiiit.
The film ends with us processing this random act of kindness on Marc’s part. He didn’t have to pretend to be Gloria for the sake of this dying man. But he did. It’s Christlike gesture in a sea of Christlike gestures, because he really does endure some Christ-level suffering. And again, before you ask why he didn’t fight back: HEAD INJURY. Dude can barely stand without puking. Imma cut him some slack, I’ve been concussed before, and it sucks.
So Marc’s open-ended fate (he surely died out there, but Fabrice du Welz calls this a “dark fairy tale” so it’s possible that he was rescued… by an out-of-touch farmer who makes an honest woman out of him, maybe) leaves us stunned. This film has been derided for its pacing, for its inclusion of several scenes deemed “unnecessary” by critics, but I get it. du Welz wanted to do something different, he didn’t want to tell a story in a classic way that would feel formulaic or poetic, he gave us something punishing, harrowing, with varying approaches to loneliness, desperation for affection, and brutish isolation. If it didn’t have so much heart and humor, i.e. Bartel declaring this the “best Christmas ever,” it would be excruciating.
I can’t wait to watch it again.
Required reading for those interested in the movement: Films of the New French Extremity: Visceral Horror and National Identity by Alexandra West