MOEBIUS - Crazy, crazy film which filmgoers who still have issues with Oedipus are advised to avoid. To anyone who just likes batshit weirdness however, I heartily recommend. An unhappy woman castrates her son and swallows his dick in retaliation against her philandering hubbie... the phallocentric twistedness has only just begun at this point, and 'Moebius' throws masturbation via 'extreme grazing' (I don't know how else to put it) and knife wound wanking at its bewildered viewers en route to an incestuous final act. None of this is particularly explicit, but 'Moebius's psychosexual notions, all delivered in an often breezy, nonchalant manner, are definitely on the warped side of Cronenberg. Its manic game of penis substitution conceals a more sober meditation on the absurdity of attachment (well, attachment to a schlong, anyway). From Kim Ki-duk, on absolute top form here in this blacker than black comedy (which is all the more boundary-pushing for being completely without dialogue). One of the most audacious things I've seen this year, and pretty much a must-see.
DEVOURED - A waitress struggles to stay afloat in the big city - all her cash goes back home to pay for her absent son's operation. Her bosses are arseholes and she's surrounded by cold, horrible people in general. Her life and sanity begin to spiral ever downwards. 'Devoured' is a flawed but interesting take on the old 'isolated descent into madness' riff. It's no 'Repulsion' (very obviously a reference point here), but it is quite affecting and, in some places, powerful. It works best when it's at its most subdued and tries to capture with some subtlety the slide into darkness some lives can take... the bleakness it evokes rings true. It doesn't do all that well with the 'horror' aspects, mostly because these are too overt to chime well with the otherwise carefully maintained atmosphere of depression. These more blatant aspects don't really kick in until nearer the end however, leaving 'Devoured''s slow, absorbing build up otherwise intact. So despite some drawbacks (again, the film's ending, which as well is a bit of a fumbled 'reveal'), I do recommend 'Devoured' as an involving attempt to step outside expectations, as it sits awkwardly and interestingly between dreary but poignant drama and something more 'genre'.
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