Thanatomorphose (2012)
Directed by: Éric Falardeau
Written by: Éric Falardeau
Starring: Émile Beaudry, Eryka Cantieri, Kayden Rose, Roch-Denis Gagnon
THANATOMORPHOSE (2012)
Written and directed by Éric Falardeau
A young woman (Kayden Rose) awakens with bruising after a night of rough sex, but to her horror, the bruising develops into something far worse as she finds herself rotting from the inside out.
French-Canadian film THANATOMORPHOSE is quite a slow moving film, with most of the screentime taken up by the young woman having sex with anyone she pleases, giving sexual favours and masturbating whilst rotting. Yes, you read that correctly. The woman’s descent into physical decay comes without explanation but you could draw parallels with how she seems to have no regard for her body and who she gives it to, thus her body no longer being a living thing but an object causes it to die.
The film is quite dark, both in content and lighting, with the action never leaving the woman’s flat. Her friends and lovers come and go, and she is seen once to go to work as a nurse, but after she becomes ‘sick’, it appears no one actually gives a damn about her. One male friend visits her in a state of confusion, bruises and bashed in head, but he seems to happily ignore this as he’s too busy having fellatio performed on him by her.
I found it very hard to like this movie as it made very little sense other than being a tale about a young woman rotting. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy the visual FX, which were all practical and make-up FX to depict the decomposing female. Full marks go to the make-up team for showing her descent, with each day looking more and more painful, as the woman eventually has to start storing her fingers in jars. Her initial injuries seem to worry her only slightly but she quickly becomes used to her decomposing body, not once opting to see a doctor. Strange, huh?!
What is interesting about this film is how she starts off as a healthy young woman with an unhealthy sexual lifestyle. She claims she cannot ‘feel’ anything during sex, but later in the film when she’s practically a walking corpse, she seems to get sexual gratification from masturbating and yearns more for sex, though to her disgust, her admirers no longer want to touch her.
THANATOMORPHOSE is a strange movie. Not one you can sit down and enjoy. However, you can appreciate the work that has gone in visually, but I just wish the story had more substance to it. With very little dialogue and the woman left to her own devices for the majority of the movie, it really drags through its 100 mins running time. It does finish on a rather cool time-lapse style note though.
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