FrightFest review – Dulce Violenza (Sweet Violence)

FrightFest review – Dulce Violenza (Sweet Violence)

After twenty years in prison in Uruguay, Esteban Gonzalez (Esteban Bigliardi) is about to be released.  He was convicted of the murder of three young women – one of the bodies was never found, and he has always maintained he didn’t kill anyone.  A circle of mostly middle-aged men – associated with the victims – intend to have him murdered when he’s outside … though they differ over methods and costs, with the father of the missing girl intent on not killing Gonzalez until he’s revealed where the corpse is buried.  Researching on the dark web, they find an Argentinian hit man who’ll do the job – his cover story is as a magician who specialises in ‘disappearing acts’ and he travels with a glamorous assistant – but the sicario wants to be paid in crypto which means that his original quoted price inflates to ten times the figure in real money.  Hiring a junkie for ‘three dollars’ doesn’t work out so well so the pro gets the gig, though the layers of scam are thick.  Will this group of people eventually have to carry out their own amateur revenge scheme.

Directed by Jeremias Segovia and written by Juan Martin Alonso, Dulce Violenza is an essay in the theory that anyone who sets out to get revenge should dig two graves … in this case, three or four graves, including one for a dog who gets in the way.  It’s told slightly out of sequence so you have to pay attention and work out what exactly has happened – how did that bloodstain get on Esteban’s carpet? – while pondering which of the characters is worse.  They’re all suspected, real or potential killers and squirm through a terrible situation where any chance of redemption is long lost.  It’s not an explicit horror, though it does eventually get down to tied-to-a-chair-and-worked-over-with-pliers business.  Bigliardi is especially good as the neutral, bland ex-con, whose level of guilt is tantalisingly hard to determine even down to a punchline which seems inspired by, of all films, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.  The title is presumably a nod to Max Pecas’ Elke Sommer vehicle Douce Violence (1962), known in English as Sweet Ecstasy.