Wow! This 2006 Hungarian film is a visionary masterpiece of weird surrealism, with enough shocks and entrails to please even jaded gorehounds. And with a keen sense of visual splendor, director Palfi has crafted a stunning world flush with lush color, ingenious camerawork, and unlikely characters. After you've seen "Taxidermia", there's no doubt you've seen a work of cinematic art, but the subject matter remains both grotesque and repellant.
Spinning tales over three generations, the film opens with a jittery and annoyingly neurotic Hungarian military man who does some rather filthy things with meat, an obese woman, and a makeshift hole in a wooden shack. I'm not sure exactly what his ability to shoot fire from his cock means, but it's certainly memorable. He fathers a son by another man's wife, which leads into the film's second "part".
Fast forward a couple of decades later, and this son becomes a competitive speed-eater, and meets a similarly obese woman. After many gross-out scenes of gluttony, man and woman spawn another child. The child becomes a skinny taxidermist, and his grisly hobby gets even weirder from there.
The film is almost entirely in Hungarian, so the dialogue was lost on me. Nonetheless, "Taxidermia" is a wonderful and stunning work of dark humor and bodily obsession that begs for further attention. Don't miss this work of startling originality. And, with a soundtrack by respected electronic artist Amon Tobin, you're in for a treat in the audio department, too. (Regent Releasing)
