At its most sensitive, Spanish director Carlos Vermut’s fourth film is about a burgeoning love affair between two lonely but very different people. Julian (Nacho Sanchez) is a modeler for a video game company who specializes in weird, terrible creatures. He is the most engaged when working alone in his Madrid apartment on his creations, using a VR headset to filter his vivid imagination into visual monstrosities. Otherwise, he keeps himself aloof from others. Diana (Zoe Stein), the friend of a work colleague he meets at a party, is more vibrant—talkative, intellectually stimulating, and outgoing—but hemmed in socially by her obligations to an invalid father, whom she cares for religiously. Their mutual attraction is casual at first, since whereas his nature is uptight, hers is carefree, and it takes a while for them to connect on an emotional level. We’ve already seen how Julian’s anxieties get the best of his impulses. He picks up a woman in a bar and can’t get it up in bed, so the gradual approach with Diana is obviously more his speed; but as the source of Julian’s anxieties becomes clearer, the sensitive aspect of Vermut’s approach turns sinister.

Because at its base, Manticore, a word that describes a creature which is half man, half beast, isn’t a love story at all. It’s a horror story, but one whose power to frighten comes from its ability to evince disgust rather than any intent to evoke terror. Early on in the film, Julian saves a neighbor, a young boy named Christian, from a house fire, and while the purport of this valiant act isn’t telegraphed as anything more than a character-establishing incident, it continues to reverberate in ever increasing waves throughout the film, first making itself felt in Julian’s digital creations, and then in his physical state, wherein certain thoughts make him actually ill. Though the viewer starts to understand what’s going on, the love story washes over the real meaning of Julian’s troubled mind, keeping it submerged beneath his desire to form a relationship with Diana; that is, until circumstances converge to make him realize what it is that he really desires, and then he can’t face the truth.

Vermut’s true talent as a filmmaker is the way he renders these various indicators organically. The repulsion he manifests in the end isn’t triggered. It’s brought about through an accumulation of subtle hints that, in hindsight, seem way too clever—everything from Julian’s seemingly innocent confession that as a child he wanted to be a tiger when he grew up, to Diana’s pixie hairstyle—but they have been so carefully curated that you don’t notice as they pop up just how penetrating they are. They linger in the imagination, because just like Julian’s creatures, they are visceral and unique. It’s only Julian himself, a sullen introvert with a secret he can’t acknowledge to himself, who is terrifying.

In Spanish. Opens April 19 in Tokyo at Cinemart Shinjuku (03-5369-2831), Cine Quinto Shibuya (0303477-5905).

Manticore home page in Japanese

photo (c) Aqui y Alli films, Bteam Prods, Magnetica Cine, 34T Cinema y Punto Nemo AIE