Carnage

A wonderful French offering whose jumping-off point is a bullfight.

A truly remarkable and compassionate debut from a savvy, self-confident filmmaker. No bull.

Carnage is a film about the violence of living, of finding and keeping a place in the world, and though it's a work of preternaturally sophisticated philosophy from a director who's barely out of her 20s, this beautiful, bizarre movie could function quite well without its capable screenplay.

Ill-suited to casual viewing. But its challenges are worthwhile, and the gifted Gleize is one to watch.

The film becomes a complex tissue of intersecting lives, but Gleize handles each developing story with amazing ease, and the fabulist touches are the icing on a very tasty cake.

It's a treat, nevertheless, to watch the daughter of Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni in a rare leading role. Chiara Mastroianni has her mother's hair and face with her father's sorrowful eyes stuck smack in the middle, and she moves as if conscious of the weight of her genetic splendor.

Audience patience undergoes a far more brutal butchering than anything onscreen in Delphine Gleize's wildly over-reaching feature debut, Carnage.