One of many titles recently announced as being part of TIFF’s lineup is Men & Chicken, a Danish comedy featuring the nation’s greatest acting export, Mads Mikkelsen, as the mustachioed patriarch of an impoverished farming family. Less a dour Scandinavian drama, more (by all available accounts) a black comedy peppered with gross-out elements — maybe not so far from Hannibal, actually, and a new trailer doesn’t leave me certain that someone doesn’t get cannibalized. Certain scenes are at least as disturbing as the prematurely cancelled show, not least of which is that thing on the Dane’s face.
Word that’s been gathered from some international showings has been predominantly positive, with critics saying writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen has made something “wonderfully off-putting” and “a postmodern monstrosity: unreadable, unknowable, morbid and cynical.” I can say, if nothing else, that the former description applies to said trailer, which suggests intriguing narrative directions, tones, and formal plays. Here’s hoping word of U.S. distribution soon follows its festival showing.
Watch the preview below:
Synopsis:
Men & Chicken revolves around two special-natured brothers, Elias and Gabriel (Mads Mikkelsen and David Dencik). Upon their father’s passing, they find out through their father’s will that they are adopted. Elias and Gabriel decide to seek out their natural father and set out for the island Ork, where their biological father lives. Here they discover a most paralyzing, yet liberating truth about themselves and their family.