Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Javier Polo
Starring: Enrique Arce, Berta Vázquez, Arturo Valls, Andrea Duro, Vito Sanz
While horror anthologies have never fallen out of fashion, portmanteau comedies have become a rare breed in recent decades. Spanish director Javier Polo (working with writers Guillermo Guerrero, Enric Pardo and David Pascual) bucks that trend with with Pet Peeves, an anthology of absurdist tales that draws on very Latin influences like Pedro Almodovar, Mario Bava and Luis Bunuel while also nodding to the Greek Weird Wave, Quentin Dupieux and Monty Python.
The title refers to a Madrid radio show that sees various listeners call in with their personal issues. Addicted to the show is a reclusive watch-mender (Pablo Molinero) who seems to have the supernatural power to intervene in the listener's lives, making their problems even worse. This acts as the framing device for four individual stories.
The first tale is quite literally a shaggy dog story of Paola (Andrea Duro), a young woman frustrated at her boyfriend, Pisco (Rubén Bernal), showing more interest in his dog than his girlfriend. When the mutt goes missing, Paola suddenly finds herself reconnecting with the downbeaten Pisco and becomes a social media star when she launches a campaign to find the elusive hound. The weakest of the segments, this one reveals its twist a little too early and ends up overplaying its one joke.
Next up is the best of the segments. Vito Sanz plays Vicent, a mild-mannered nebbish who is long peeved at how his friends often act like he doesn't exist. Arranging a dinner for two couples, Vicent drops the bomb that he's been diagnosed with cancer and may only have weeks to live. This segment could be mistaken for a product of France's absurdist auteur Quentin Dupieux as Vicent's friends barely react to his bombshell and instead get distracted by the appearance of a beetle on their restaurant table. As he has recently displayed in his collaborations with filmmaker Jonás Trueba, Sanz has a sadsack Woody Allen quality that he mines to great effect here as the exasperated Vicent.
If the subjects of the first two stories were longing for human connection, the protagonists of the final two chapters are conversely in search of peace and solitude. The third story is something of a comic riff on the dripping tap segment of Mario Bava's gothic horror anthology Black Sabbath, in which a woman is driven mad by a frustrating faucet. Marta Belenguer plays Sofia, a yoga instructor who prides herself on a philosophy of calmness. Sofia's calm world is disrupted by the arrival of a new neighbour whose parrot insists on loudly repeating the phrase "Long live pesetas!" through the thin walls. With its clear Bava influence, this segment wouldn't be out of place in a horror anthology, and indeed it all leads to a bloody denouement.
Finally we get the tale of a man (Enrique Arce) who likes to spend his summers at a caravan camp. This summer he finds himself constantly pestered by his fellow campers as they try to inveigle him in their bonding activities. His refusal to indulge their hospitality leads to him being ostracised, with the management exercising laughably pedantic bureaucracy to make his summer a misery. This one has the seed of an idea that might work as a feature but it doesn't have enough time to explore its ideas and play out the scenario to its full potential in this format.
Like any anthology, Pet Peeves is a mixed bag in terms of quality. If the first and last segments don't quite work, they sandwich a pair of enjoyably absurd tales anchored by the engaging performances of Sanz and Belenguer. But what makes Pet Peeves stand out from most comedies is the attention it lavishes on its production design. This movie is gorgeous, with a primary colour scheme that appears simultaneously indebted to the camp comedies of Almodovar and the gothic horrors of Bava.
Pet Peeves screens at the Raindance Film Festival on June 20th and 21st.
