Fantastic Fest 2009

“I saw THE HAMSTER CAGE at the Fantasporto Film Festival and fell in love with it immediately. The film has played to tremendous reviews worldwide (check out the recent Film Threat review), but for some reason has been ignored in the States. Perhaps the black comedy reached a new level of darkness that has turned off traditional festival programmers. Here at Fantastic Fest, however, we say bring it on.” (Tim League, Fantastic Fest)

“The greatest discovery beyond the competition: Larry Kent’s bizarre family-portrait The Hamster Cage. Kent, known from his beginnings (first film, 1963: Bitter Ash) as “the father of Canadian independent cinema,” has created over the last 40 years a very small but remarkable oeuvre of about 10 feature films. For many years he remained unnoticed, but now he is back again with his familiar provocatory brilliance. The Hamster Cage reveals a British-Canadian middle-class-family as a hell of Oedipal scenarios. This stormy revelation takes place at a family celebration, and the abysses that open on this occasion are darker and deeper than in Vinterberg’s The Celebration - but Kent stylizes his de-masquerade as a hilarious farce, in which a dead body will never be dead enough. A funny horror film and a spooky comedy, The Hamster Cage looks like a Woody Allen film that has all the anarchistic eccentricities Woody Allen never dares to show.” - (Rainer Gansera, International Federation of Film Critics)

Watch that first minute and you’re in it ‘till the very shocking finale which just happens. There’s nothing leading up to it, nothing to prepare you for it, and that’s how it fortunately remains. It also begs the question about where America’s Larry Kents are. Do we have them as insightfully as him? Wherever they are, they ought to come soon because compared to what Kent has made with “The Hamster Cage”, we are way behind. (Film Threat)

complete Film Threat review

2006 FANTASTIC FEST COMPETITION FILM
This film is eligible for 2006 Fantastic Fest jury and audience awards