Blackly humorous, yet moving, story set in rural Poland. Jacek, a speed metal freak (and Aphex Twin lookalike) works on a construction site erecting the world's tallest statue of Jesus. After a terrible accident, he receives a face transplant, the first in Poland, and becomes both a celebrity and a local pariah, 'Mug' to the village kids. Artfully shot, authentically cast, with a sense of both the absurd and a very human understanding of difference and rejection, Mug is definitely worth looking at.
In terms of genre, this film would probably be best described as a tragedy, though there are enough touches of humour to keep it from becoming unenduringly bleak. In other hands, this material could easily have become a tearfest, but the filmakers resist easy sentimentality, or offering any pat resolutions. The narrative offers a few interesting parallels between the locals attitudes towards a giant headless statue, and actual human suffering, but is never heavy handed. A slight criticism might be that possibly we spend too much of the film with the main character after his accident, and not before - though maybe that sense of loss is itself deliberate? (3.5 out of 5)