Bull­head

Behold the lat­est instal­ment of hyper­mas­cu­line art-house cin­e­ma! Quite lit­er­al­ly fuelled by an excess of testos­terone, Bull­head is ready­made for those who want­ed more of a third-act to Dri­ve.

Begin­ning with the stan­dard ​‘you’re fucked from cra­dle to grave’ nar­ra­tion and fea­tur­ing the impres­sive (yet ulti­mate­ly unex­pres­sive) phys­i­cal­i­ty of Matthias Schoe­naerts (Rust and Bone), this bucol­ic tragedy details the ille­gal hor­mone obses­sions of Flem­ish cow farmers.

Shad­owy, under­de­vel­oped mafioso shout sin­is­ter procla­ma­tions across steak din­ners, shots are fired and heads are smashed into cow shit, all in the name of mak­ing larg­er prod­uct to com­pete with ​“the Hor­mon­ic States of Amer­i­ca.” Who is involved, what they’re actu­al­ly doing and how any of this could pos­si­bly be worth their trou­ble alter­nates between unclear and dull, but that’s not the only source of dra­mat­ic tension.

In what could well be the least sub­tle nation­al alle­go­ry ever com­mit­ted to film, an awk­ward­ly placed, extend­ed flash­back reveals why pro­tag­o­nist Jacky (Schoe­naerts) is obsessed with bulk­ing up: just as he was begin­ning to devel­op sex­u­al­ly, his balls were irrepara­bly smashed with a rock by a deranged French kid. (Isn’t that how we all remem­ber those years?)

As these Wal­loons had a vague knowl­edge of his family’s nascent deal­ings with ille­gal growth hor­mones, the inci­dent was report­ed to the author­i­ties as an acci­dent. Now in his thir­ties and nut­less, Jacky bides his time by long­ing­ly star­ing at his brother’s wife and chil­dren, using ille­gal injectibles to main­tain his size and stalk­ing Lucia (Jeanne Dan­doy), the sis­ter of the guy who turned him into This Monster.

Despite being a study of wound­ed mas­culin­i­ty, Gal­licly toothy Lucia man­ages to be the most believ­able and well-writ­ten char­ac­ter: ini­tial­ly charmed by Jacky’s awk­ward silence, she quick­ly puts the absurd hap­pen­ings behind her and tries to get away. By con­trast, Diederik (Jeroen Perce­val), Jacky’s child­hood friend who wit­nessed the beat­ing and is now work­ing as a police infor­mant, is a lame car­i­ca­ture of a clos­et­ed homo­sex­u­al, clum­si­ly smooching every man who gets too close to him, present only for the sake of counter-example.

But what would you expect from a direc­tor whose cred­its include an adap­ta­tion of Hemmingway’s ​‘Today Is Fri­day’? The inept­ness that per­me­ates the script – be it in the fun­da­men­tal absur­di­ty of the sto­ry and char­ac­ters, its mud­dled plot­ting or dumb dénoue­ment – is bless­ed­ly not repeat­ed visually.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Nico­las Karakat­sa­nis is equal­ly adept at ren­der­ing the Flem­ish land­scape in soft, melan­choly tones as he is con­vey­ing the inti­ma­cy or claus­tro­pho­bia of small inte­ri­or spaces. The sub­tle­ty achieved by his light­ing and palette is increas­ing­ly rare on film or dig­i­tal stock and breath­tak­ing enough to war­rant a sec­ond-view­ing with the sound mut­ed and sub­ti­tles off.

For all its force­ful blus­ter, moments of silence or near-silence – as Jacky aggres­sive­ly shad­ow-box­es nude, alone in his room, or as he sticks unla­belled nee­dles into the flaw­less skin of his thighs – most com­pelling­ly evoke the dis­so­nance and emo­tion of his trau­ma. It seems as though it’s still the strong, silent type that wins out in the end. How unfortunate.