In the local Mediamarkt I ran into a box with “Aaltra“, “Calvaire” and “Tarnation”. Three cult-films for 6 euros! “Calvaire” is great, “Aaltra” very amusing and “Tarnation” is a strange experiment of a young director. His first full-length is an extremely personal autobiography (though told in the “he” form) about his troubled youth. Caouette’s mother (to whom this film is an ode) was mentally wrecked by an accident and many shock-therapies after that. She was in and out mental hospitals for the rest of her life. Caouette spent time in many foster families, was abused and in the end put under the care of his grandparents who were even crazier than his mother. As an outlet Caouette started to run around with filmcameras from an early age. His epileptic montage suggests that he used much of that old material in his documentary. Experimentating to the extremes of filmographic possibilities, the film goes well together with “Calvaire” (the last part) or perhaps even comparisons with Gaspar Noë are not completely strange. The film is definately interesting and weird. Some of the biographic parts take a bit too long, but overall this film is definately worth watching.
