Meat (Vlees) (2010)

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General		Extras
Category	Erotic Drama	Trailer-over 30 trailers Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	2010
Running Time	83:19 (Case: 85)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Victor Nieuwenhuijs Maartje Seyferth
Studio Distributor	Accent Film Entertainment	Starring	Titus Muizelaar Nellie Benner Hugo Metsers Elvira Out Kitty Courbois Gürkan Küçüksentürk Jasper van Beusekom Ali Sultan Frans Bakker Eric van Wijk Taco Schenkhuizen
Case	Amaray-Opaque
RPI	?	Music	Willem Cramer

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	Dutch Dolby Digital 2.0 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     Meat is a film where images are far more important than a linear plot. It is a film with minimalist dialogue and long, static takes, the camera lingering on the actors and their inner thoughts. For what it is worth, Meat is about a butcher (Titus Muizelaar), his young part-time female assistant Roxy (Nellie Benner), another woman (Wilma Bakker) and a Police Inspector (also Titus Muizelaar). The film commences with intercut scenes, some of which are repeated later, and slowly evolves into a study of sex, lust, obsession, identity, murder, and meat.

     Meat (original title Vlees) is a film for those who like and appreciate European “art-house” cinema, where little is obvious and little explained, but it will certainly alienate others with its ambiguity, high impact sex scenes, sexual violence and graphic scenes of meat carcasses being butchered. This is not a film to watch whilst having a steak for dinner. At times the film is indeed too oblique for its own good, lost in the images, and some sequences of Roxy and her video camera feel tacked on, but on the whole directors Victor Nieuwenhuijs (who was also cinematographer) and Maatje Seyferth (who also co-wrote the script) have fashioned an intense, confusing, dreamlike film replete with good performances and some stunning visual images; the last image in the film of Nellie Benner naked upon the butcher shop counter is simplicity itself but is intensely beautiful, more so because we know just what she is looking at.

     Meat is an intense, mesmerising, low budget art film that will certainly alienate audiences with its subject matter and visuals. I found it to be very different, and very compelling. If you enjoy off centre European cinema, Meat is well worth looking out for.

Video

     Meat is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. I suspect the original ratio was 1.85:1, but certainly the image does not appear cropped.

     Meat is a low budget film that is exceedingly grainy. This results in a fair degree of softness and lack of detail, although close-ups of Titus Muizelaar’s grizzled face and the meat cuts are sharper. Shadow detail can be indistinct, although blacks are not too bad. The film also looks to be quite bright, making the colours dull and unnatural, and the skin tones very light.

     As well as the grain, there was the occasional aliasing on vertical surfaces such as bars (23:38) and some minor ghosting with motion. There was also a couple of fleeting white specks.

     The layer change (64:19) resulted in a slight pause.

     English subtitles are in a white font and are timely and easy to read. Other than “layed” for “laid” (13:56) I did not notice any spelling or grammatical errors.

     I have read a review of Meat when the film was shown at a film festival. The reviewer comments upon the grain and look of the film; as such it seems that the DVD is an accurate rendering of the film.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     Audio is a Dutch Dolby Digital 2.0 track at 448 Kbps, surround encoded.

     Despite the audio being 2.0, the sound design for Meat is excellent. Dialogue was clear and the surrounds produced a constant hum of ambient sound, such as the freezer motors in the butcher shop, that was surprisingly enveloping. The original music by Willem Cramer was also prominent, sometimes also used as part of the hum of the sound design. The score, indeed, was a character within the film; it was diverse and varied, including organ music, medieval sounding instruments, many things in between and ended with a pop song. It was intended to be noticed, and succeeded. I did not notice anything directed to the subwoofer.

     Lip synchronisation is fine.

     A very good audio track, supporting the film’s visuals.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Trailers

     On start-up there were trailers for Wake Up and Die, Devil Seed, Q, Little Deaths and Red White & Blue that collectively run 10:13. A total of 30 trailers of Accent Film Entertainment releases can be selected from the menu - some, but not all, of the start-up trailers are repeated- and we do get a trailer for Meat included. There is a “play all” option.

     There does not appear at this time to be any other version of Meat listed on English language sales sites.

     Meat is European “art-house” cinema, an intense, mesmerising, low budget art film that will certainly alienate audiences with its subject matter and visuals. If you enjoy off centre European cinema, Meat is well worth looking out for.

     The video reflects the film’s low budget origins, the audio is very good. A raft of trailers is the only extra.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall