Universal Language

Directed by Matthew Rankin, Universal Language unfolds within a surrealistic alternate reality involving quirky schoolchildren and an oddball government worker. Filmmaker Rankin, armed with a screenplay written alongside Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati, kicks off Universal Language with an almost shockingly misguided and seriously off-putting opening sequence involving a browbeating teacher, and it’s clear, certainly, that the picture’s arms-length atmosphere, which is firmly and totally set in place right from minute one, is perpetuated by Isabelle Stachtchenko’s ugly, unpleasant visuals and a recurring emphasis on desperately unfunny bits of deadpan comedy. (This is, after all, a picture that finds a store that just sells tissues and a turkey riding a bus the absolute height of knee-slapping hilarity.) It’s not surprising to discover, as such, that Universal Language generally stumbles from one ill-conceived set-piece to the next with little thought towards coherence or forward momentum, while the proliferation of one-dimensional, unreasonably impassive characters ensures that one’s efforts at connecting to something (anything) here fall hopelessly flat – which, when coupled with an absolutely interminable midsection and second half, cements the film’s place as a complete trainwreck that falls right in line with Rankin’s abhorrent debut, 2019’s The Twentieth Century.

no stars out of ****