Posts Tagged ‘Horror’
Giallo *
There seems to be an opening for a horror fan amongst the programmers at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. They just can’t seem to programme interesting horror. Over the last few years, their selections have been high-profile trash: from Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, through Land of the Dead and H6: Diary of a Serial Killer, to Giallo.
Taking its name from a long-established genre moniker, Giallo should be a smart incision in the skin of this typically Italian thriller/slasher bastard (or at least, a witty send-up). Unless I’m missing something… (this is quite possible, given my ignorance of the rich film history it clearly references; the detective could symbolise contemporary American horror; the eponymous killer might even stand for the genre itself!) …this is a bizarrely stupid film: internally inconsistent, stylistically incongruous, skin deep, paying barely cursory lip-service to substantiality. However reminiscent of Dario Argento’s classic works, it abandons everything which made them so well respected. We follow a stewardess, Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner, gamely putting on one of the least credible American accents in film), whose sister has been abducted by a cab-driving Turinese serial killer (Byron Deidra). Legendary local detective and former New Yorker Enzo Avolfi (a petrified Adrien Brody) hunts the murderer with a barely tangible fervor. That’s basically it, aside from some plot points haphazardly lifted from the genre and slapped together with lazy bemusement.
Even if it’s meant to be a joke, it’s an intolerably bad one – unlike the infinitely superior Antichrist. Admittedly, it is at the expense of film past, not audience present – but as a cinematic fart it out-stinks Antichrist by far. The script seems to have been strangled by its umbilical cord. It is beyond expositional, more than prosaic: repetitive, ridiculous. Character relationships are introduced by naming (c.f. “Hey, what’s my little sister up to?”). Plot is so riddled with holes that it is incredible, a fatal flaw which prevents the audience from entertaining the film’s propositions. Inevitably, once a critical mass of viewers have been worn down, the well-meaning crowd can’t help but ridicule the film, bursting into laughter at each further P we are supposed to make believe. The impatient critical audience will boo, if they are still awake. Does Argento want us to be so self-aware, so disconnected from the plasticine world he’s created?
Antichrist ****
Grief. Pain. Despair. Lars von Trier: Antichris♀. Prologue. As an unnamed couple (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe) indulge in operatic, earth-shattering, slow-motion sex, their son tumbles out a window and plummets to the pavement with arms spread like wings of an angel. The high-gloss black and white, snow-globe aesthetics are a sarcastic snub to the highbrow stylization of grand opera. The child paused to watch his parents’ intercourse, and as they refused to acknowledge him, he resolved to take a leap: he put in great effort to arrange an elevated runway, across a table adorned with figurines labelled Grief and Pain and Despair. There is nothing accidental about Lars’ set-up. Act one. After spending some time in a psychiatric ward, tentatively exploring the early stages of grief, we enter the realm of a subverted Book of Genesis. The couple take refuge in their forest cabin, named Eden. He uses torturous psychoanalysis to drive her through grief; she is riven by guilt, as though it were the full weight of original sin, as borne by Eve. Rather than facing her fears, he immerses her in them. Act two. She wades through excruciating psychobabble, conflicted copulation and frustrated masturbation. Haunting symbols emerge in the guise of savagely mutilated animals. The fox speaks. We discover that she used to visit Eden alone with her child, to work on her thesis. A thesis on the concept of nature in archaic and pseudo-mythic acts of violence against women. She apparently gave up because he dismissed her subject as glib. Act three. She comes to the anticipated conclusion that her sexuality is responsible for the death of her son; internalizes her studies and becomes the embodiment of the evil she sought to critique; descends into psychotic sexual hysteria. Unbearably graphic violence ensues. Epilogue. Faceless souls of female subjects of violence ascend through the forest, spirits freed.
