Dario Argento 1996 Italy
Starring: Asia Argento, Thomas Kretschmann, Marco Leonardi, Luigi Diberti, Paolo Bonacelli
A few weeks ago I read an interview with the director Dario Argento and, while he came across as willing, intelligent and suitably creepy, the thing that struck me most was that his complex relationship with his daughter, the actress, director, writer, DJ and sometime singer Asia Argento, wasn't discussed or even broached. In most cases this wouldn't be an issue but the Argentos have worked together several times with Asia even saying that she agreed to act in her father's films against her better judgement and disenchantment with acting (a profession she likened to prostitution) in general because it was the only way to be able to spend time with him and that he only became her father when he became her director. As a young child he used to read her his scripts as bedtime stories, at fourteen she ran away from home and their first official collaboration was called Trauma so it's perhaps both understandable and worrying that the parts he casts her in are often physically and mentally stringent and certainly not the kind of role most fathers would want to see their daughters play let alone direct them in. His 1996 work The Stendhal Syndrome is no different, featuring as it does Asia as a policewoman searching for a razorblade chewing serial rapist who subsequently becomes his victim, the subject of his terrifying attentions and in some ways his conduit. She also suffers from the disorder of the title, typified by swooning, fainting, loss of memory and even hallucinations in the face of great beauty, in this case art, particularly Rembrandt's The Night Watch and Bruegel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus amongst others. At the sight of Icarus she appears to plunge into the painting's deep waters, excitedly swimming and kissing grotesque fish, later it's extended to graffiti that bounds off the walls threatening to bite her. Asia is an odd presence, beautiful and unruly, intense yet wild, capable of playing the romantic lead just as well as the dangerous and sexy seductress. Such is her charisma that if I met her in real-life I think I'd be both attracted to and quite scared of her. I first saw her in my teenage years in a rare TV screening of Michael Radford's stunning but near-impossible-to-see B Monkey and almost immediately began hunting out her other performances. Within weeks she was among my favourite current actors and has remained in that position ever since. Here she's on exceptional form, never allowing her Anna to become the mindless and helpless woman-in-peril typical of many horror films but still letting herself be vulnerable and, in the blood-soaked vengeance sequence, packs both an emotional and a literal punch, dragging the scenes out of their essentially rudimentary foundations. Argento Senior, while not at his very best, also brings a lot to the table creating a painterly aura and shooting in Florence's Uffizi Gallery and with CGI (both firsts in Italy). And of course there are countless dazzling scenes including one in which he references his own Suspiria when Thomas Kretschmann's Alfredo peeps through the bullet hole he's just shot in a woman's face and another that features Asia covered in paint and resembling a chameleon. At times the plot does fall into predictable giallo-ish silliness and there's at least one incongruence (although knowing Argento's penchant for twisty games this could be an intentional lapse to create doubt about the conclusion his characters come to) but when you've got Asia working hard in the lead role, a score by Ennio Morricone and a great (or least once great) director popping visual wheelies you don't question the small stuff, you simply bask in the turbulence, so glad for the madness.
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