Receive Weekly Email and Text Message Updates:
Sign up for latest info on concerts, dining, promotions and more!
Go!

Top

film

Stories

 
Text Size: A A A

'13 Tzameti'

The artiest entry in the ever growing torture-movie genre, this playfully wicked French thriller from twentysomething provocateur Gela Babluani blasts its way into your brainpan with the help of black-and-white widescreen cinematography whose striking but smooth textures better suit the upwardly mobile auteur than his poor protagonist. Patching roofs in rural France to support his impoverished Georgian immigrant clan, Sébastian (the filmmaker's boyishly handsome little brother Georges) gets screwed out of a paycheck, then impulsively assumes another man's identity in pursuit of untold opportunity from a train ticket and mysterious instructions that the wind literally blows his way. Narrative contrivance abounds well past the point when the kid learns that Fate has tapped him to play a most dangerous game, though Babluani's own sport-shooting advances one's heart rate enough to push logic aside. As a brutal metaphor for the global economy, 13 Tzameti takes care of business; its assertion that desperate means require desperate measures naturally extends to the hair-trigger world of genre filmmaking, wherein young Babluani did what he had to do.

 

more by Rob Nelson

Write Your Comment

*indicates required fields. Please enable browser cookies before filling out this form. All reader comments are subject to our Terms of Use. By clicking Add Comment, you acknowledge that you have reviewed and agree to these Terms.

Comments may take a few minutes to process and appear on the site. Please do not click the "Add Comment" button again while your comment is being added.

  • *
  • *
  • *
  • *

    (The four characters are not case sensitive):

Music Recommendations

User content provided by LikeMe.net + Village Voice

Webster Hall

New York, NY

Spotted Pig

New York, NY

Corner Bistro

New York, NY

Schiller's Liquor Bar

New York, NY

Gramercy Tavern

New York, NY

Pacha

New York, NY
Give your recommendations on LikeMe.net >>

Find A Film

Most …

Box Office

  1. Dear John, 32.4 mil, 32.4 mil
  2. Avatar, 23.6 mil, 630.1 mil
  3. From Paris With Love, 8.1 mil, 8.1 mil
  4. Edge of Darkness, 7.0 mil, 29.1 mil
  5. The Tooth Fairy, 6.5 mil, 34.3 mil
  6. When in Rome, 5.5 mil, 20.9 mil
  7. The Book of Eli, 4.8 mil, 82.2 mil
  8. Crazy Heart, 3.6 mil, 11.2 mil
  9. Legion, 3.4 mil, 34.6 mil
  10. Sherlock Holmes, 2.6 mil, 201.6 mil
Movie Title, Weekly Earnings, Total Earnings

Trailers

Village Voice on Digg