Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 6: Fri Jan 6

Symptoms (Larraz, 1974): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm


This film, also being screened on January 15th, was chosen by director Mark Jenkin as part of his 'The Cinematic DNA of Enys Men' season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Time Out review:

Made by a Spanish director working for an English company, with Angela Pleasence running mad in an old dark house and giving murderous vent to her sexist grievances, this is the finest British horror movie from a foreigner since Polanski’s Repulsion. The comparison is inevitable, because thematically the films have a good deal in common, charting the gradual mental dissolution of their spectral heroines. Symptoms imitates, but also improves on its original in a multiplicity of ways. The muted love affair between Pleasence and Lorna Heilbron is etched with enormous suggestiveness, and Larraz’s eye for visual detail is mesmerising.

Here (and above) is an extract.

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