Melancholie der Engel (2009)

(AKA: The Angels' Melancholia)

My rating 4/10

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Two friends meet again after many years. Along with a few people they all go to an old house where they indulge themselves in horrific depravity!.

First of all, the good. Some of the cinematography is excellent, as it is in most of Dora's films. The score is also great and really sets the mood in a lot of scenes. And that's about it really as everything else about this is either boring, gross or just pointless. The dialogue is pretentious as hell and often makes little or no sense. The acting is okay but no one is really given anything to do except wander around and do gross things to each other.

Speaking of gross, as this is a Marian Dora film we're of course treated to an endless stream of bodily fliuds including people vomiting, pissing and a lovely close up scene of a woman, who must have taken a couple of laxitives beforehand pissing and shitting. There's lots of full frontal nudity, both male and female and plenty of sex which is often very explicit!. Surprisingly, there's very little in the way of graphic gore. We get an old man being gutted in a boat and some burned human remains, but for most people the real problem is the animal cruelty.

Insects are killed, lizards and frogs are crushed, a pig is slaughtered which is intercut with a nasty rape scene, a kitten has it's throat cut and is left to bleed to death, a snail has it's eye stalks cut off with a pair of scissors, and, well, you get the idea!. None of this adds anything to the movie and how the hell this director manages to get away with this crap in this day and age is beyond me!.

I really can't recommend this movie to anyone. I'm sure Dora had a vision in mind while making it but it's lost on most that see it. It really does seem like it exists to show off his hatred for animals, humans and life in general, oh, and to indulge himself in his gross fetishes. At 150 mins it's also way too long and you'll probably find yourself fast forwarding through a lot of it.

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