Films about the darker extremes of toxic masculinity are nothing new, but this timely topic has gained wider traction in the era of Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and the growing global army of conservative culture warriors terrified by the modest gains of feminism and LGBT rights. South African director John Trengove’s second feature Manodrome explores these issues elliptically through the mental unravelling of one man, Ralphie, played by Jesse Eisenberg, who is drawn into an underground incel cult at a time when he is feeling especially fragile both emotionally and financially.
Premiering in the main competition section in Berlin, Manodrome feels in places like a contemporary take on classic studies of radicalised male loners like Fight Club (1999) or Taxi Driver (1976). Indeed, Ralphie’s job as an Uber driver may be a sly homage to Martin Scorsese’s landmark urban drama, a foundational text in the pantheon of sociopathic machismo movies. Trengove’s emphatically indie drama sometimes feels a little underpowered and underdeveloped for such inflammatory subject matter, but strong performances and newsworthy talking points should guarantee festival buzz and art-house audience potential.
Trengove made a big splash with his feature debut, prize-winning queer drama The Wound (2017), which was shortlisted for an Academy Award in the Best International Film category. Billed as a “nihilistic thriller”, Manodrome touches on similar themes – clandestine male rituals, repressed homoerotic desire – but in a North American cultural context. Filmed in a wintry Syracuse, New York, during Covid restrictions, it feels like a specific snapshot of the US in the bitter aftermath of Trump’s presidency, though the director insists the purposely fuzzy setting could be any time or place.
Ralphie and Sal (Odessa Young) are a young couple with a new baby on the way. His precarious Uber job barely covers their mounting bills and healthcare costs, adding to the steady crackle of tensions that already threaten their relationship. Ralphie is also carrying around the lingering scars of family trauma, only vaguely explained here, and secretly fixated on another man at the gym where he works out, Ahmet (Sallieu Sesay), illicit sexual urges that he is too scared to fully acknowledge. Trengove is gay himself, and makes some darkly funny points here about the inherently homoerotic energy of ultra-macho, all-male subcultures.
A much-needed release valve for Ralphie’s pessure-cooker anger seems to come in the form of Dan (Adrien Brody), surrogate father figure to a gaggle of lost boys who have sworn off women, relationships and sex. Dan is a silver-tongued snake-oil salesman, a natural politician, sweet-talking his damaged young acolytes with ego-boosting platitudes: “There is a staggering beauty in you, a cataclysmic power to create or annihilate.”
Brody does great work here, oozing slippery charm and suave condescension without slipping into hammy stage-villain caricature. So it seems a pity that Trengove makes him such a minor player in Ralphie’s psychodrama. How and why did Dan come to assume this self-appointed guru role? What are his ultimate aims for his dysfunctional alternative family? Is this just a boring self-help group for inadequate, resentful men or an embryonic terror cell with grander, darker ambitions? Alas, the first rule of Incel Club, it seems, is you do not talk about Incel Club.
Famed for playing skinny, pale, cerebral bookworms, Eisenberg initially seems almost absurdly miscast as a steroid-pumped, testosterone-drenched, blue-collar anti-hero. Indeed, Trengove initially looked at hiring a much more alpha-male actor. But Eisenberg proves an inspired choice for Ralphie, his twitchy intensity hinting at the sexual anxiety and brittle vulnerability that often underlie boorish machismo. His lurid coppertone haircut and unusually bulked-up body, achieved through months of gym work, add to this sense of deep unease, a conflicted and sensitive soul trapped inside a performative facade of hetero-normative masculinity imposed on him by society. Young also lends authentic bite to a long-suffering girlfriend role initially earmarked for Riley Keough, who retains a producer credit.
Manodrome is shot with a grungy, washed-out, indie-scruffy aesthetic punctuated by occasional arty flourishes, like when Wyatt Garfield’s kinetic camerawork becomes explosively jittery during Ralphie’s cathartic, confessional venting session with Dan. The film’s prevailing mood is mostly a low hum of creeping dread, so the final rampage of lethal violence, including a brutal sex scene which blurs the line between rape and seduction, feels slightly jarring and sensational. Although Trengove tackles rich and contentious subject matter here, he leaves too much unexplained and unexplored. Manodrome is a compelling drama on an urgent theme, but it might have benefited from a little more conversation and a little less action.
Director, screenwriter: John Trengove
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Odessa Young, Adrien Brody, Sallieu Sesay, Philip Ettinger, Ethan Suplee
Cinematography: Wyatt Garfield
Editing: Julie Monroe, Matthew Swanepoel
Music: Christopher Stracey
Producers: Gina Gammell, Ben Giladi, Riley Keough, Ryan Zacarias
Production companies: Felix Culpa (US), Liminal Content (UK)
World sales: CAA Media Finance
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Competition)
In English
95 minutes
