Mother of Tears (Argento, 2007): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.40pm
This film, which is also screening on May 24th, is part of the Dario Argento season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
Time Out review:
A colleague recently remarked that there’s plenty to admire in Dario Argento’s
movies; you just need to look past the acting, writing and
incomprehensibility. That compli-sult has actually been a mantra for the
Italian horror legend’s fans, who’ve admired the maestro’s singular
gift for stylistic Grand Guignol even when everything else descended
into camp. They’ve held on to the hope that the man behind such genius
giallos as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) might
suddenly reappear. Their patience has paid off, sort of. This
over-the-top thriller offers extended flashes, if not a full-blown
homecoming, of the artist his long-suffering devotees know and love. For
the rest of us, this is simply tasty supernatural goulash served with a
side of Fangoria pictorials. The filmmaker
immediately dives in and goes for baroque: After workers unearth a
mystical urn, deafening chants fill the soundtrack and an archaeologist
is graphically strangled by demons with her own intestines. The victim’s
coworker (Asia Argento) is spotted by an evil monkey—damn you, Satan’s
li’l simian!—and the chase is on. Meanwhile, a demonatrix (Atias) and
some witches fresh out of the coven turn Rome into Hell’s Disneyland. Argento
conjures up such hyperventilating, high-pitched delirium that it’s
tempting to forgive the dialogue (“Hey, dere’s sumpin’ down dere!”) and
the fact that all the performers besides Dario’s daughter can’t act
their way out of a sack with a map. But this is the man who gave us the
classic Suspiria, and to treat this as anything other than the
director’s return to watchability is disingenuous. That old Argento
black magic, literally and figuratively, is still AWOL.
David Fear
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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