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• Classification: M
• Written and directed by Roman Polanski
• Starring Jodi Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz & John C. Reilly
• Runtime 80 minutes

SEEING grown-ups behaving badly can be very funny, but highly embarrassing for them, if they saw themselves. Carnage is not only amusing, it’s also a study and an understanding of human behaviour. While not everyone will find it funny, it’s the ridiculousness of the situation, and the dialogue that makes it hilariously funny, considering the characters ages and their status.

Adapted from Yasmina Reza’s play Le Dieu du carnage (The God of Carnage), and written by Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza, and directed by Roman Polanski, a director who never wastes time. Not only does the film poke fun at the characters, it also exposes to ridicule some of the tools and trappings of modern life. Mobile phones, ones mother’s pie recipes, and the prominent and significant part alcohol plays in most of our lives. As mothers would say to their children: “enough of this, or it’s off to your room!”

When eleven-year-old Zachary Cowan strikes his eleven year old classmate Ethan Longstreet with a stick and Ethan looses a tooth, after an argument in a local park. The Longstreet parents, Penelope (Jodi Foster) and her husband Michael (John C. Rielly) invite the Cowan parents, Nancy (Kate Winslet) and her husband Alan (Christoph Waltz) into Brooklyn apartment, to try and resolve the situation in which young Ethan Longsteet lost a tooth, with another looking like it could go the same way.

Penelope Longstreet is a pedantic peace and responsibility fanatic, her husband Michael runs a chain hardware business, and calls his wife a writer, although she has only ever co-written one book. Nancy Cowan is a nervy financial analyst and her husband Alan is a lawyer, who spends his life on his mobile phone, something that really frustrates and adds to his wife’s nervousness. After Alan changes one word in Penelope’s documented explanation of the boys fight, from armed with a stick to carrying a stick, the two couples move into the Longstreet’s lounge room, sitting on chairs directly opposite, with each family facing each other.

At the end of the room in front of fireplace Penelope has arranged a bunch of tulips in a large vase.

When Penelope asks if everyone want coffee, Michael suggests they also try his mother’s recipe pie, as the Cowan’s tuck into and make complimentary remarks about the pie, Alan moves to the back of the room with his pie to answer his mobile. Penelope is going on about how the Cowan’s are responsible for Ethan’s missing tooth, and demands an apology, but not money.

Having had a second helping of pie, now Nancy is feeling sick, and soon she is, all over Penelope’s treasured Art books and Alan’s trousers. With Alan cleaning himself up in the bathroom, and drying his trousers with a blow dryer, Penelope wants the blow dryer to dry off her books. As the discussions become even more heated, Michael suggests a drop of his 18-year-old single malt Scotch whiskey from some special Scottish distillery. Nancy having cleaned herself up now gets stuck into the whiskey. Michael, one who tries to be as accommodating as possible to retain civility in any situation, starts opposing Penelope’s arguments telling everyone he ran a gang as kid, and Ethan was a funk for not fighting back.

Fed up with her husband’s mobile phone behaviour Nancy she takes action to prevent him using it, but Michael gets it back working with the blow dryer. Soon the effects of the whiskey, Nancy can’t get enough of it, has enlivened everyone, and while the hatred and the verbal sparring begins to get less confrontational, Polanski removes us from the scene.

Watch the trailer

Carnage is in cinemas March 1.

The Movie Hound’s Pick

• Killer Elite (Three Stars – in cinemas February 23)

Based on a shockingly true story, Jason Statham does a deal with an Arab Sheik to find and kill some particularly members of Britain’s SAS who killed his sons, in exchanged for the release his mentor Robert De Niro. Having killed two of the targets, the SAS old boys society instruct one of their own, Clive Owen to seek out Jason Statham and kill him. While Clive Owen chase Stratham and De Niro all over the world Stratham is a bit craftier than he looks. While the plot is a bit twisted the performances for an action are good enough, and action scenes are well staged.

Lotterywest (PIAF) Film Festival

Circumstance [MA15+]

• Written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz
• Starring Sarah Kazemy, Nikohl Boosheri, Reza Sixo Safai, Sarah Kazemy & Nasrin Pakkho
• Runtime 107 minutes
• Four Stars

AMERICAN educated writer-director debut Maryam Keshavarz ‘s Circumstance, is a truly bold illustration of what upper middle class young Iranians have to put up with, no dancing, no pop music, no romance and the religious police to see they have no fun. The mistreatment of women and the war against gays. While she spends too much time titillating us with lesbian love affair between two school friends, something she didn’t need to do. Because the rest of the story is so complete and full of dramas.

The upper middle class Hakimi family, father Firouz (Soheil Parsa), a professor of music, his wife Azar (Nasrin Pakkho), a surgeon, daughter Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) a schoolgirl, and son Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai) who has just returned from drug rehabilitation with a religious vengeance. As a family they are liberal, enjoy music and the arts. Atafeh seeks a life of fame, adventure, as a risk taker she and school friend Shireen Arshadi (Sarah Kazemy) become lovers, drink alcohol, try drugs, listen to pop music and generally do everything which young people are not allowed to do in today’s Tehran, with its religious police.

Mehran was once a very promising musician but much to the family’s regret, he has returned from rehab a very different person, having given up music, he’s now a religious fundamentalist and unknown to his family, working with the religious police. Having set up CCTV throughout the family house, he’s become jealous of Atafeh relationship with Arshadi, a girl he wants to marry. Firouz and Azar are pretty liberal and in the late 1970s demonstrated against the Shah, but are now unhappy with the Islamic Revolution which replaced him, but now don’t dare challenge it to preserve their wealth and community status.

So when Atafeh and Shireen are caught in an underground nightclub, Mehran sees to it that Shireen is not arrested, on condition she marries him. She knows her uncle, her guardian, a fundamentalist would disown her, possibly even might kill her. While Atafeh was arrested her father knew how to fix it, able to afford it, money changes hands. Luckily Atafeh has a Plan-B, disgusted by her brother’s behaviour and unhappy with Shireen for marrying her despicable brother, she put the plan in to operation.

Circumstance screens exclusively and at Joondalup Pines, March 13-18.

Watch the trailer

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