Film Review
Through the lurid excesses of Giallo, a distinctive style of Italian
horror film that was hugely popular in the 1970s, directors
Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani compose a distinctly
unsettling and succulently sensual exploration of female
sexuality. This is Cattet and Forzani's first feature, although
they have previously distinguished themselves with a number of short
films, notably
La Fin de notre amour
(2004) and
Santos Palace
(2006). With its eccentric use of colour filters, manic zooms,
extreme close-ups, and seedy inter-cutting of slasher-style gory
excess with suggestive sexual imagery, to say nothing of its
spine-tingling electronic soundtrack,
Amer
appears to fall between respectful homage and outright parody of the
Giallo format. Whilst it runs the risk of resembling a plotless
pastiche of an out-dated genre, the film has an indefinable mesmeric
quality and an abstract poetry that makes it a rich and rewarding
viewing experience. This is subjective cinema at its most
extreme, a journey through the twisted labyrinthine passages of a
warped consciousness, a shadowy wonderland of visceral carnality where
terror and desire are not merely bedfellows but two facets of the same
sensual reality.
Amer is so drenched in the
familiar Giallo motifs that it feels like its directors have taken a
sharp razor blade to the films of Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Mario
Bava (
The Girl Who Knew Too Much,
I tre volti della paura)
and performed a Frankenstein-like assembly job, knocking up a
gruesome baroque monstrosity that is as brilliant as it is insane, and
far more than the sum of its parts. The film's morbid
preoccupation with life-sustaining and life-creating bodily fluids owes
something to David Cronenberg, furnishing the film with enough Freudian
imagery to inspire a dozen Ph.D. theses, whilst its surreal flights of
fancy pay homage to
Luis Buñuel
and David Lynch. This is
definitely not a film for the squeamish or the easily offended.
Whilst
Amer embraces Giallo
in all its wild fetishistic glory, it transcends both the slasher and
psycho-sexual genres and is a powerfully authentic statement of the
twin traumas of sexuality and mortality. With its psychadellic
stylisation and sliced-and-diced composition,
Amer has a dreamlike texture that
is both visually arresting and highly unnerving. One of the
weirder erotic horror excursions in recent years, it plunges us into
the realm of the purely sensual and confronts us with the distillation
of our darkest fantasies and deepest neuroses. If the film does not
leave you feeling shaken, disorientated and violated, you should
watch it again, preferably alone, in an old dark house...
© James Travers 2011
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
At three key stages in her life, Ana is assailed by conflicting
feelings of fear and desire. In childhood, she is seized with
terror when she witnesses an old woman perform a bizarre death ritual
whilst her parents yield themselves to a horrifying bestial act.
As an adolescent, she is aware of the power she exerts over young men
as she flaunts her nascent sexuality for her own amusement.
As a mature woman, she returns to her childhood home and soon falls
prey to a mysterious masked man dressed entirely in black. The
nightmare that ensues will be the fulfilment of her destiny and her
most primal desires...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.