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‘Sirat’ Review: Oliver Laxe’s Excruciatingly Tense, Escalatingly Insane Road Trip Through a Desert Purgatory
Oliver Laxe graduates to Cannes competition with a brilliantly bizarre, cult-ready vision of human psychology tested to its limits.
Though dwarfed by the spectacular dusty canyon walls nearby, the sound they produce — the first of composer Kangding Ray’s astonishing pieces, a growling bassline that grinds like tectonic plates massing against each other — matches them in grandeur. Suddenly the empty desert is filled with writhing, gyrating bodies, beautifully yet truthfully shot by DP Maruo Herce, their old tattoos and sunburnt scars, their braids and studs and ragged tees emphasizing that these are no Coachella selfie-takers, no Burning Man tryhards. And with just enough warm bonding moments to convince us that the film has swerved from its missing-girl premise to become an offbeat, techno-driven found-family road movie, it’s hard to convey how jaw-dropping it is when, right after the halfway mark, an eviscerating tragedy occurs.
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