ABERRANCE
City dwellers Erkhme and Selenge temporarily trade in Ulaanbaatar for a cabin in the pristine Mongolian woods. You see, Selenge is the sensitive, artistic type and the city’s hustle and bustle can quickly overwhelm her finely tuned senses. That’s why her loving husband Erkhme decided that the peace and quiet of the countryside might do her some good. He’s definitely the caring type, but he does have a bit of an authoritarian streak. For example, he serves her homemade soup but forces her to swallow pills – supposedly tranquillizers to calm her nerves – along with it. She’s also got some suspicious bruises on her body and at night she has some of the most vivid, THE SHINING-ish nightmares about her significant other. And now she’s all alone with him in a cabin in the wilderness? Well, not quite alone. There’s one neighbor and luckily, he’s the friendly, nosy type that likes to sit on his porch observing the new residents next door. And he does not like what he sees… Before opting for the director’s chair, Bataar Batsukh was a cinematographer on several Mongolian action flicks and it’s clear he carried all of his experience – as well as his love for Daren Aronofsky, to whom he dedicates this film – over to his first feature. ABERRANCE is kinetic, visually striking and above all original and daring. Its extremely diverse stylistic pallet (painterly strokes of lightning, breath-taking night scenes, color filters, unusual camera angles and compositions, Steadicam mounted onto characters as they fall, crash or fight, etc.) and numerous twists quickly overwhelmed all of our senses. But we know better now than to go calm our nerves in a cabin in the Mongolian woods…