'The Temptation of St. Tony,' Veiko Õunpuu: review

"The Temptation of St. Tony" is a visionary account of the moral journey of an ordinary man trying to do what's right in a world that's indifferent or hostile to goodness. Full of extreme imagery and offering many darkly satirical touches, this Estonian picture brings to mind the work of Luis Buñuel, David Lynch and Ingmar Bergman.

That's pretty lofty company, and I'm not sure that director Veiko Õunpuu is quite ready yet for the pantheon. But he's aiming high, and the result, though not totally satisfying, is worth a look by devotees of visionary filmmaking.

We first see the beleaguered Tony (Taavi Eelmaa) heading the procession at his father's funeral. A car races by the procession, flips over and crashes horribly, but the mourners simply keep on walking. Tony will later encounter the car's driver, who's stumbling around with a bleeding head, and is quite smitten with Tony's luxury vehicle. The mixture of absurdism, tense comedy and despair is typical of the story that follows.

Tony's experiences are thoroughly nightmarish. There's a dreadful dinner party with nasty colleagues and his unfaithful wife. There's an ugly interrogation in a police station dungeon, after which he meets a mysterious woman (Ravshana Kurkova) who reappears at regular intervals. (Tony's attempts to relieve her suffering will bring him nothing but trouble.) And there's a major set piece where Tony visits a Lynchian nightclub called the Golden Age, a hellhole where the activities include the auctioning off of hapless women.

These and other sinister events lead Tony to wonder what's the point of it all. An encounter with a despairing minister - the film has a fair amount of religious imagery - suggests that the answer isn't a happy one.

Õunpuu has a tendency to scattershot us with one-off literary, artistic and filmic references (one character suddenly reels off a William Blake quotation, for example), and relies too much on stock horror-movie imagery, like masses of severed arms. Some of the visuals seem like shock for shock's sake.

But the excellent black-and-white cinematography by Mart Taniel keeps us watching, even if certain of the film's puzzles remain painfully obscure.

-- Advisory: Sexual content and disturbing images.

E-mail Walter Addiego at waddiego@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle