South African director John Trengove follows-up his debut The Wound with another take on masculinity, this time set in the States. Manodrome stars Jesse Eisenberg and Adrien Brody as a newbie and a veteran in a support group for men who have been emasculated by women and feminism. That's right, this is a film about incel culture, but one you haven't seen before. In tandem with Taxi Driver, Fight Club, or Joker, Manodrome represents a new era for the incel movie, as it confronts all the terror and aggression feeding into the community head on. Ralphie (Eisenberg) insists that his girlfriend Sal (Odessa Young) keeps their unplanned baby and deep down the rabbit hole he goes. Mental health struggles that have no outlet, worries, disappointment, alienation: all these facets of Ralphie's character come to the fore and bring him to the Manodrome clan, where Dad Dan (Brody) promises two miracles—absolution and acceptance—in exchange for celibacy. Trengove's sophomore feature is a blood-curdling psychological thriller that is not afraid to go to extremes (content warning!) to show that incels are not, in fact, a dorky online minority of youngsters, but a real wound in the body of our patriarchal world.
Synopsis
Ralphie is an Uber driver and aspiring bodybuilder who is inducted into a libertarian masculinity cult and loses his grip on reality when his repressed desires are awakened.
Storyline
Unemployed and troubled by his girlfriend's pregnancy, a young man named Ralphie finds solace in a new-age self-help group of men who practice celibacy as a way of relating a world that seems unjust.
TLDR
The chasm between masculinity and feminism has never been deeper.
What stands out
Jesse Eisenberg's Ralphie is strong, distant, simmering with pent-up rage directed to no one in particular. Not much left of his more conventional roles like The Social Network. In Manodrome, he is petrifying, full stop. Perhaps it's the tight script or Trengove's directorial advice, but Eisenberg has never been better. As Ralphie, he has a tiny emotional range to explore, but the nature of the role insists on a nonverbal, physical presence. Therefore, it's easy to imagine his guy as violent and we bring this anticipation into the film, awaiting for the blow. Especially in the scenes with Adrien Brpdy, who is poised and quietly angry, Eisenberg can explore the darkest depths of his character by channelling a vulnerability that he, paradoxically, has strictly excised from his MO.
