The possibilities of short-form fiction: Wild Tales

The Argentine (?) 2014 film Wild Tales is justly described - a sequence of five short stories, with no plot connection or common theme drawing them together, except that each of them is wild for sure and incredibly engaging and entertaining. I won't give anything away, but the stories include a revenge fantasy executed with incredible precision (and creepily predictive of a recent disaster), another revenge fantasy involving a middle-aged waitress and a customer who destroyed her mother's life some years back - should she take vengeance or not?, a road-rage story of incredible inventiveness, a man who fights back quite inappropriately against bureaucracy and government ineptitude with surprising consequences, a weird and sick plot to cover up for a kid involved in a fatal hit and run, and the most astonishing wedding sequence every filmed I think. Each one of these is great, and together they make a terrific set - so pleasing to see a smart writer-director working in short format - bigger and longer is not always better, in film or in any art form. I still remember Steven Wright's comment when he won an Oscar for best short subject: Thanks, and I'm glad I cut the other 60 minutes. Writers are often warned away from spending too much time early in their career on short fiction - you'll burn up all your material, it's said, w/ some truth perhaps - but here's a director not afraid to burn up material, he or she (i'm going to look it up in a moment) has an abundance of inventiveness and wit, including not only visual wit but some great dialog (esp in the opening story) and I hope we'll see more from this direct or and that others will be inspired to play around with short-form cinema. Director is Mr. Damian Szifron, of Buenos Aires. Keep going, Damian!