Cadavres (2009) - 2.5/4

Cadavres has some points in common with an Irish film of a year earlier, A Film with Me in It. Both films have two amoral characters seemingly the playthings of some demented fate that finds creative ways of accidentally killing nearly everyone who comes in contact with them. Cadavres, however, is the more accomplished film, its vibe much sleazier, and the humour much more French.

In this case, the two amoral characters are Raymond (Patrick Huard) and his sister Angèle (Julie LeBreton). In the first few minutes of the film Raymond assists his mother to suicide when she wraps her lips around the gun at his crotch and he pulls the trigger. If that doesn't set the sleazy, incestuous tone, I'm not sure what would. He leaves her body in a swamp by some Quebec highway and immediately calls his television star sister, whom he hasn't seen since they were kids.

Once his sister arrives, we kind of get two threads going at once. It's not really clear which is sleazier. On the one hand, there's the very black comedy that ensues from disposing of the mother's body. When they return to the swamp to collect her body, they collect the wrong body. It seems that swamp is a magnet for cadavers. Eventually someone comes to trade their mother's body for that body, but the next body is the wrong body as well. Then other people die. Soon the cellar is filling with more bodies than they can bury.

On the other hand, Cadavres is a rather edgy love story. Raymond and Angèle were close as children, as several clever flashbacks make clear. Not talking for over a decade, they're now almost strangers. Angèle has become a sexy sophisticate and Raymond is a lonely degenerate who has all of her work on DVD. The very set of the delapidated family house mirrors both the decadence of the family and Raymond's mind, grimy as it is, the bedroom walls crudely painted with grotesque nudes, the television a relic of the '70s, the cellar full of decaying bodies. His interest in his sister is clearly beyond brotherly love as he sabotages her vehicle to make her stay with him. And after collecting the body, Angèle strips before Raymond in preparation for a shower. He tries to look away, but she seems to be tempting him to indulge his eyes on her form and she sure seems to enjoy tempting.

These two threads existing side-by-side leads one to wonder how they complement one another. It's as if the universe were limiting their options, getting everyone out of their lives, so Raymond and Angèle can be alone together. Or is it as if the universe were rebelling against the abomination of incest by setting it upon a pile of dead bodies? I prefer the former. I'm not sure what director Erik Canuel was going for, but I found the assortment of odd, comic characters that kept bursting into the house became as annoying to me as to Raymond. I wanted them to get out of Raymond's way. The love story worked the best and gives the film some beauty in the midst of the filth. I was actually routing for Raymond's incestuous love. The vile, scummy universe Raymond inhabits, reminiscent of some of Jeunet's cinematic worlds, seems to agree with my sentiment, however impossible fruition of any sort would seem in this wasteland.

As to the comedy, well, are you familiar with Quebecois comedy? Or French comedy in general? The French are not very keen on the understated. The French prefer the overstated, in fact. Their comedy is often clownlike: very energetic, highly expressive, and generally goofy. In the case of Cadavres, there is a steady stream of oddball characters coming to the house, all offering hit-and-miss comic relief. I found Raymond the funniest and all around most fascinating part of the film. He's dark and vile, yes, but his general lack of emotion and consistent perversity is amusing. You wonder at the worldview of a guy like that, but then you kind of see it all round him. He can also spin his whole body balanced on the head of his penis, apparently. That's impressive.

Cadavres is a hermetically-crafted picture, not to be underestimated due to its goofy comedy. It is full of visual symbols. One could comb through it for significance and certainly be rewarded for doing so. For instance, after shooting his mother twice in the head, Raymond gets his finger stuck in a hole in the roof of his car. Later he peeps through a hole in a painted vagina on the wall to watch his sister undress. Now, I'm no Freudian, but...