Bullhead

Jacky is the son of a cattle-farming family in Belgium and is inside the hormone trade. He has been using hormones himself for years; his body has swollen, his rage has become ungovernable, and why that is only becomes clear once the film goes back to his childhood. An investigation into the killing of a veterinary inspector brings him face to face with his past. The subject is not the criminal network but masculinity built on a wound. Every dose Jacky takes is an attempt at repair and none of them works, and that is where the tragedy comes from. The form is heavy and physical: closed barns, mud, laboured breathing. Matthias Schoenaerts put on around twenty-five kilos for the role and the whole weight of the film is carried on his body. Behind it lies Belgium's hormone mafia. Michaël R. Roskam said he started from the 1995 murder of the veterinary inspector Karel Van Noppen but that the film does not reconstruct that case; in his own words, its relation to the hormone mafia is like Hamlet's relation to the Danish royal family. It is Roskam's first feature and was nominated for the foreign language Oscar. Jeroen Perceval and Jeanne Dandoy are in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like hard European crime drama and tragedy built on one character. Who it is not for: anyone put off by the weight of the violence and the animal scenes; the film never softens.