The Temptation of St Tony

Easy to see how this might attain minor cult status: Tarkovsky-lite in its black-and-white allegorical religiosity and, more pleasingly, boasting that dark, droll wit found in the finest Northern auteurs, the film is also prone to rhetorical outbursts of strangeness, down to a near-inevitable Denis Lavant cameo as a inferno-esque nightclub MC. The faintly surreal aesthetic is also fuelled by moments reminiscent of/alluding to Kafka and Buñuel (Calanda drums accompany an unconvincing coda), and while the inspirational mishmash stretches to Blake, Dante, Chekhov, Pasolini and the Lumières, the tale of a misbegotten, basically well-meaning middle-manager’s trials and tribulations in a forlorn late-capitalist landscape still just about hangs together. A film of conspicuous ambition and good moments rather than a persuasive, fully achieved commentary on modern life.