Calvaire

Calvaire: A strangely asexual pretty-boy troubadour, whose sad love songs leave the old bags at the retirement homes wet between the legs, gets stranded on the way to a Christmas gig in an ultra-Sodomesque, all-male rural Belgian village. . .and unfortunately for the crooner, there is room for him at the village’s run-down Inn, where he undergoes a bizarre re-birth as the incarnation of the lunatic Innkeeper’s ex-wife, *Gloria.*

This perversely comic Euro horror flick is chock full of inverted Christian/Christmas imagery. . .the born-again chanteuse must suffer many things of the depraved village’s elders and chief priests. The movie’s title would be translated into English as *Calvary,* and, indeed, the hapless vocalist must suffer a crucifixion. Among other assorted mean Christian parodies, there is also a *manger scene,* in which a baby calf is introduced to the joys of human bestiality. . .

These types of films are often dismissed as vulgar expressions of sadism, meant only to sate the increasing blood-thirst of violence/torture-addicted Western masses. Yet when done with a certain degree of artistry, as is this one, they can also (whether accidentally or not) celebrate the ugliness of mankind. . .*we are all degenerates, now*. . .this is best shown in the film’s surreal tavern dance scene, in which the village’s demented übersexual males do a mad Bron-Y-Aur kind of Stomp set to hellishly discordant piano music. . .it’s an ogre’s ballet. . .and the movie can be heralded as the Art of the Damned.