CALVAIRE **

"Calvaire" is a horror film and it hails from Belgium and it is very, very weird. The title means 'the ordeal' and you may indeed consider it an ordeal depending on your tolerance for something that is a cross between Bunuel, Bela Tarr and torture porn and yet I rather liked it. It's about a singer called Marc who finds himself stranded in a far from welcoming village over the Christmas holidays after his van breaks down, the weather turns bad and he finds himself lost. He holes up for the night at a strange inn run by Bartel only to find himself taken prisoner, dressed up in drag and forced to act like Bartel's faithless wife and that's even before the mad, bad and murderous villagers turn up for more fun and games, (this is when things start to get really nasty). It marks the feature debut of director Fabrice Du Welz and it shows considerable promise. It's often as funny, (intentionally, thank God), as it is unpleasant, though in the end it's the gross out scenes of horror you're likely to remember. Bound, almost certainly, for cult status.