A young rural Mexican family is torn apart by the arrival of a strange
young woman who introduces them to a mysterious tentacled creature.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Amat Escalante
Starring: Simone Bucio, Fernando Corona, Jesus Meza, Ruth
Ramos, Eden Villavicencio
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Over a relatively short directorial career, Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante has given us more than his share of shocking images. His latest, The Untamed (whose Spanish title translates as 'The Savage Region', a reference both geographic and genital), opens with another doozy. Following a Malickian tableau of celestial movement, we quickly return to earth with a medium closeup of a young naked woman, Veronica (the waifish Simone Bucio; think a latin Charlotte Gainsbourg), who appears to be pleasuring herself. When the camera tracks out however we catch a glimpse of a Lovecraftian tentacle extracting itself from her nether regions. It's an experience Veronica appears to have taken much pleasure from. Off screen, a voice tells her she must leave. "Can't I stay just a little longer?" she pleads.
We soon learn that Veronica's boy/girlfriend is a tentacled beasty that lives in a barn, protected by an elderly couple. A nearby crater suggests its origins may be otherworldy. In an incredibly arresting images, animals from a dozen or more species come together for an orgy in the pit - lizards, snakes, goats, horses, dogs; the logistics are staggering. I'm still unsure if it's an image that's beautifully disturbing or disturbingly beautiful. Either way, it's quite something!
Escalante's film owes more than a little to Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 masterpiece Possession, another tale of a young woman escaping an unhappy marriage by copulating with a slithering mass. Alejandra - who takes the place of Veronica as the alien's lover when the latter becomes literally spent by its carnal power - doesn't adopt the extreme deranged behaviour of Isabelle Adjani in the Polish auteur's film, but she does experience an awakening, transforming from a quiet victim of her society's Catholic influenced chauvinism to a liberated woman who stands up for herself, against her husband and her disapproving mother-in-law, and against popular morality by indulging in a form of sexual pleasure most would deem her sick for enjoying. Good for her!
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The Untamed is on Shudder UK
now.