Strane storie (Racconti di fine secolo)

'Strange stories' is nowhere close to being a horror flick. But what struck me about the movie was the fear it put into me. The situations were bizarre, but the emotions were very real. They were emotions that you and I feel on a day to day basis. Desperation. Hate. Desire. Loneliness. Anger. At any given point in the movie, any one of us could have been the protagonist. Right from the father (also the narrator of the story) who includes his co-passengers as characters in his plots (diagonally opposed to how they appear in real life; like the sophisticated lady is a uncouth foul mouthed woman in his story) to entertain his inquisitive daughter.

The strange stories he creates toying with the desperation of a man who forgets to pay his oxygen bill, the woman who buys a mate at a supermarket only to discover that he's expired commodity, the families, in a peaceful neighborhood, who go to war, literally. Each one is a sordid tale of what lies inside of us all. That's what scares. The fact that the narrator's exaggeration may not be far from the truth. At the same time, in the end, the tale is robbed off the narrator's hands as he realizes that life's taken a turn and placed him in a strange story instead.