WEEK THREE (Oct 14): WOMEN IN HORROR
Click the poster for the real deal that's kinda sorta really NSFW said:
Calling
Amer a love letter to giallo films would be an understatement on par with stating that Godzilla is a big reptile.
Amer doesn't just love that wildly varied subset of Italian filmmaking: it's practically masturbating wildly in public, singing something to the tune of one of the better known themes from the films it loves so much.
For some, they probably won't get past the wild masturbation on the part of the filmmakers. Directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have crafted a somewhat unclassifiable film that doesn't seem particularly interested in explaining itself. There's very little narrative, and truthfully, not much of a drive to that narrative, as it feels like three short films of varying lengths sewn together on a fairly general idea of it charting a girl's growth to adulthood, via different styles of films to tell each of the three ages. However, it isn't so abstract that it lends itself to boundless amounts of interpretations, as the imagery is pretty blunt and self-explanatory. It's in that weird spot where it's neither conventional, nor is it avant garde. Identifying just what
Amer is seems difficult, as the film doesn't seem particularly interested in saying much of anything. It may just as well be an exceptionally gorgeous advertisement for the French Riviera, as much as it is a collection of the filmmaking duo's favorite visual ideas from their favorite films, wedded to some of their favorite soundtrack cues.
I've often complained that with a lot of giallo, many of its filmmakers would have been better off not trying to tell a story, as they were often rather poor storytellers, and focus much more on creating and maintaining a mood. Cattet and Forzani seem to agree with me there, as
Amer unfolds like a progressively more and more audacious blend of daydreams and nightmares, which has more in common with Argento's non-giallo work from the late 70s and 80s than anything else. While
Amer can't stage a sequence nearly as breathtaking as, say, the first murder in
Suspiria, it definitely manages to capture that same kind of pervading dread for most of its runtime, where each scene feels pregnant with an especially malicious menace, even without the context of an awakening sexual identity. The atmosphere is, quite literally at times, dripping from the ceilings. With extra special care given to the sound design of the film, where even the bristling of a comb sounds alien, it's an easy film to get lost in.
More importantly, though, the filmmakers are having a lot of fun, which is a frequently uncommon sight even in their inspirations. Without having the expectation of having to really worry about impressing anyone with a story, they're able to bounce from scene to scene with a string of strong sequences that work well enough on their own, but really shine when you can't be too sure of what follows them. They also have a good level of self-awareness throughout the whole film: I especially like the small details that they nailed for how things were done back then, like unconvincing old man makeup that renders the actor more demonic than elderly, or having red herrings (or as much of a red herring as a film like this can get) by focusing on a character's affinity for black leather gloves. The other recent giallo pastiche,
Berberian Sound Studio, also had a lot of fun in those regards, which explains why I like that one just as much as this one.
I hate to say I like a film just because I do, but who am I to go against my gut feeling?
