Carlos Vermouth is 42 years old but narrates with the youth of a twentysomething and the wisdom of an old man. With four films in a decade, each one more individual and unique than the others, the director has established himself as one of the most interesting looks of the current cinemacapable of tearing apart, using the camera as a scalpel, the most decadent of society.
‘Manticore’ it is, perhaps, his best film, but also the hardest to watch, a masterpiece of monster movies in which not a single euro has been spent on special effects. No need: sometimes, to find the biggest monsters you just need to put a camera and start shooting.
Between video games and dating
The manticore, in the Middle Ages, was the personification of evil. And that is what Julián seeks to encapsulate in the first scene of the film, a quiet approach to creating a monster from scratchas a preamble and summary of what the viewer is about to witness during the most uncomfortable two hours lived in a room in a very long time. Uncomfortable, but necessary, cathartic and that not everyone will want to understand.
‘Manticore’ plays it with a twist at the end of the first act that later goes on to leave as a secondary or tertiary plot while evolves the love story between the two protagonists. However, Vermouth knows that what we have seen remains like a cloud in the minds of viewers. What is happening on screen is secondary, empathy is non-existentthe nervousness is increasing with each approach.
As if it were a snake (or a manticore), Vermouth envelops the viewer during the first two acts in a climate of certain monotony, lulls him, allows us to meet his two main characters and we understand their relationship, but it’s all a smokescreen: in the third act, already trapped by the snake, we can only wait submissively for it to inject its poison into us. ‘Manticore’ is evil and vilea monster movie that gives real terror without the need for artifice, makeup or special effects.
the curtain falls
The more I think about ‘Manticore’, braver seems to me. Being able to fall into the hackneyed “Are everyday monsters really monsters, or should we have empathy for them?”, Vermouth does not offer any redeeming qualities: when the curtain and the stage that has been created fall, the only person who does not see the being evil as such… is himself. It is an incredible work of narrative construction that dares with an unprecedented ending, sick and fabulous.
Vermouth has created, once again, a film of absolutely dysfunctional and broken people who put on a mask with an embroidered smile hoping that no one realizes that their presumed normality is just a deception that they try to convince themselves. She happens to Julián, but also to Diana, a woman who he only finds meaning in life by taking care of his fatherbedridden, and not as socially capable as he appears.
In ‘Manticore’ everything is a game of appearances, lies, veils, shame and denial of being. The film, with its silences and its discomfort sought in the dialogues, seeks strangeness in normality and the singularity of everyday life: the main couple believes that they are looking for love, but they only seek to accept themselves and reconcile with their needs. Sounds nice on paper, but the road to it is absolutely terrifying.
bitter vermouth
This is not a film for all audiences that, in fact, it will be condemned by many for its theme, its rhythm, its roughness or their allegedly monotonous performances. And it’s understandable, really. But, moving away from praise or empathy for those who do not deserve it, Vermouth achieves the most difficult yet: make us understand him without lessening our revulsion for him.
And he achieves it with shady but not explicit scenes, showing that no one needs to impact the viewer to leave him marked and what is intuited but not seen is more frightening than a macabre and sickly close-up. ‘Manticore’ is as elegant as it gets without ever ceasing to be a film of extremes marked by the most absolute sordidness.
For some (among whom I am not) ‘Who will sing to you’ was a step backwards in the director’s career, but with ‘Manticore’ he has returned, yes or yes, to the front row making the difficult easy with a metaphor about monstrosities, everyday villainssick love and aberrant personalities forced to remain in a world of appearances that they believe (and only believe) that they know how to control. A true marvel.