AV CLUB
By Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
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| "The Ornithologist" directed by João Pedro Rodrigues; Strand Releasing; Opens June 23, IFC Center and Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York City |
A nude swimmer, hunky like an underwear model, slits the surface of a pond at dawn. He slips a canoe into a river, only to be caught in rapids and rescued by two Chinese hikers lost on a Christian pilgrimage along the Way Of St. James, who string him from a tree in rope bondage and threaten to castrate him. He goes skinny-dipping with a deaf, goat-teat-sucking shepherd named Jesus. He is shot by topless huntresses in a forest clearing. And like the jokes goes, “What do you call this act?” “The Ornithologist.” In João Pedro Rodrigues' obscurantist and presumably very personal narrative, which bears disconcerting similarities to a grating American indie called The Catechism Cataclysm, he is also an allegorical stand-in for the Catholic patron saint of lost things, St. Anthony, who was also born Fernando. [
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| Movie poster for "The Ornithologist" |
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