Barbarians
Mixing business and friendship can on occasion be a great success for all parties, but for property developer Lucas Hunt it has already lost him one friend, a disagreement having led to a court case which ended summarily when the stress let to a fatal heart attack for his former partner Alan Wickes.
Determined to press on, he has not revealed to his remaining creative partner, sculptor Eva Velasquez whose works will form the centrepiece of each home, that he is suffering cashflow problems; living with her boyfriend, director Adam Davies, in the first completed renovation which also serves as her workshop, why spoil Adam’s birthday party?
Lucas arriving with his girlfriend Chloe, she and Eva find common ground in their love of art while supposed best friends Lucas and Adam soon lapse into their not-so-friendly rivalry, Lucas’ need to prove his success pushing the insecure Adam into a corner, the increasingly physical competition for dominance leading to underhanded tactics then curtailed by the arrival of masked gatecrashers.
A character drama of personal and professional jealousy which takes a left turn into bloody home invasion as Lucas’ previous misdeeds come a-knocking, the premise of writer/director Charles Dorfman’s Barbarians is set up in the premise of Adam’s prospective script of a caveman caught in modern times, only a thin veneer of social interaction and agreed behaviour distinguishing the interloper from his supposed more evolved peers.
Beneath his polished corporate smile, Lucas (Souls of Totality’s Tom Cullen) is manipulative, putting people in awkward situations then exploiting them, taunting and assaulting Adam (Game of Thrones’ Iwan Rheon) then calling him childish when he responds, while Chloe and Eva (Inès Spiridonov and Catalina Sandino Moreno), initially trying to keep the peace, discover their own reasons to resent each other.
The camera looking down on the estate as the gods look down at barbarians in the arena, Lucas’ dream of creating something special while respecting the past is chipped away to reveal the truth beneath as inevitably as Eva works her stone, the image of an injured fox recurring throughout, in need of help but unable to stop itself lashing out, a wild animal whose instinct to survive overrides all else.
Barbarians’ UK premiere took place at FrightFest
