SUSPIRIA (2018)

Having patiently awaited the arrival of this film for years, Luca's SUSPIRIA did not disappoint.

Fiercely, unapologetically artsy and experimental, Guadagnino's redux is every bit as stylised and unique as Dario Argento's original. However, beyond their shared premise and characters, the two films really couldn't be more different. As the Italian director of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME has remarked himself, aesthetically and thematically SUSPIRIA '18 is far more indebted to the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder than it is to Argento's body of work.

And what a thematically rich film it is! Dave Kajganich's screenplay is a tale of radical social upheaval and power struggle, and the terrible damage that societal change can inflict on the lives of those who are caught up in it. Mirroring the revolutionary atmosphere of its Berlin '77 backdrop (a city reeling at the chaos wrought by the Baader-Meinhof R.A.F.), Guadagnino's coven of witches is a far cry from the unified sisterhood of Argento's film. Rather, this is a secret society that is teetering on the brink of a major power shift, as its members throw their support behind one of two "mothers", Tilda Swinton's Madame Blanc and the ancient Helena Markos (also played by Swinton, under a mountain of prosthetics).

There are deeper strands at play in all this - the overshadowing horror of the Third Reich; Womankind's war against the Patriarchy. This new SUSPIRIA leaves you with a lot to chew on. It's a bold film, actually more of a total reimagining than a remake, so it's hardly surprising that its reception from fans and newcomers alike has been nothing short of completely polarised.

Is it a new Euro-horror masterpiece, or an overly-long pretentious mess? I certainly know which camp I fall into, but in spite of my love for it, I feel like this isn't a movie that I could ever really "recommend" to a friend. Luca Guadagnino's SUSPIRIA is a challenging work of art that people should come to on their own terms, hopefully leaving their preconceptions about its source material, and what a horror movie "should" be, at the door.

SUSPIRIA trailer dissection

Darkness, Tears and Sighs!

With just days to go until its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, let's take an uncomfortably close look at this week's trailer for Guadagnino's SUSPIRIA remake. The devil is in the detail, as they say, so I've obsessively dissected this two minutes of footage for you to peruse at your leisure. Feel free to conduct your own postmortem examination, but be careful what you look for, you might find it (or it might find you).

First, a comparison of characters (and casting) carried over from Argento's film:

Suzy (now Susie):

Sara:

Miss Tanner (is that human fucking hair?):

And of course, Madame Blanc:

And now to the trailer itself:

Hexengeschäft!

Mysterious psychoanalyst, Dr. Jozef Klemperer. Very obviously played by Swinton, but Luca and Co. are trying to pull a fast one on us, claiming that the role has been filled by an enigmatic actor by the name of Lutz Ebersdorf. They've gone so far as to create a fake IMDB listing for him, with a detailed career summary that makes him sound like a character out of SUSPIRIA itself.

A luminous presence.

Helena Markos, is that you?

The Colour out of Space.

Who the fuck is this? A member of the Coven? Lutz? 

Diagram of Evil. The names "Millius" and "Mandel" are a nod to the '77 film's Professor Milius and Dr. Frank Mandel (played by Udo Kier). "Sonia" is also carried over from the orignal, the ballerina impaled by falling debris at the beginning of the film.

A reference to Argento and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli's aesthetic. In green...

...and purple.

The Akademie.

The Dancers.

Their Masters (note "Helena Markos" poster).

"Broken Mirrors / Broken Minds".

A dance? Or a ritual?

The wonderful location that I made all that fuss about last year.

Mother?

So, this looks like a shot from the gory set piece that was screened for the press earlier this year, to an overwhelmingly visceral reaction of shock and disgust.

A powerful connection. Madame Blanc holds...

... Susie in her spell.

Sara, be careful what you look for. You might end up with pins in your eyes!

Filling the shoes of the late, great Alida Valli, Angela Winkler (CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA) makes for a suitably menacing Miss Tanner.

Don't go in there!

A great shot of Susie and her mentor.

I know this is a dance film, but this is taking the term "footloose" far too literally.

WITCH!

This is intriguing, and fits in well with the film's themes as well as our current sociopolitical climate. A dark past, an evil ideology hiding in plain sight, emerging once again to cause violence and hatred. Wait, am I talking about fictional black magic, or real world fascism? 

The mask comes off. I imagine this shot is from the film's conclusion. Is that a fucking pile of dancers in the middle ground arranged into some kind of occult freeze? If so, I'm very much reminded of this iconic image from Michele Soavi's THE CHURCH. This is a good thing.

It appears that Tilda Swint- uh, I mean Lutz Ebersdorf's Dr. Klemperer has fallen afoul of that which he should not have meddled in.

The Madame, at the height of her power.

Well, that's it. Following its debut in Venice, expect the first reviews to hit on September 2nd!

SUSPIRIA trailer and poster

Great logo! Hope any posters that are to follow are more visually interesting than this, but in terms of colour scheme and typography, this is an intriguing design choice for a horror film.

The trailer is fantastic. Sinister and full of grim portent. For the most part they're keeping things mysterious, revealing just a handful of visual clues, and wrapping the teaser up with a few tantalising glimpses of evil witchiness. Love the poster for the Markos Tanzgruppe! As I predicted last year, the beautiful Art Nouveau staircase of the Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori (one of the films primary locations) features prominently. No sign of Jessica Harper's cameo yet.

Perhaps the most interesting clues in this trailer are the unlikely references to terrorism: the Red Army Faction's AK-47 and star logo scrawled in the diary, and in the police station, an anti-terrorism flyer next to the missing poster for Chloe Grace Moretz's character. The flyer depicts an ominous and seemingly appropriate image and the headline "Mord beginnt beim bösen Wort" - murder begins with a bad word.

SFF 2017: The Rest of the Fest

Sydney Film Festival '17 has wrapped, so here's some capsules for the remainder of the movies that I caught this year (you'll find reviews for THE UNTAMED and THE LITTLE HOURS below this).

Simon Rumley's FASHIONISTA is his most assured film since debuting with the singularly weird THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. Anchored by an awards worthy performance from Amanda Fuller (and a welcome return to the genre for STARRY EYES' Alex Essoe), FASHIONISTA begins as a fairly straightforward narrative, but soon fractures into a multi-timeline mindfuck which will have you straining to keep up with all the threads. Movies like this can be a chore, and this screening did have more than its fair share of walkouts, but I found Rumley's arthouse horror tribute to the films of Nicolas Roeg to be a very rewarding trip.

LADY MACBETH is director William Oldroyd's first feature, and on his first outing he's crafted a period thriller that's bound for cult status. It features a riveting performance from Florence Pugh as feminist firebrand Katherine, as she rebels against misogynistic oppression in the loveless marriage that she's been sold into. The part must have been a dream role for Pugh, as it follows a sensational arc that sees her going from hapless victim to mischievous rebel to triumphant avenger to... well, that would spoil the fun! Hers isn't the only scene stealing to be savoured either, with Paul Hilton and Christopher Fairbank turning in deliciously vile turns as Katherine's husband and his industrialist monster of a father. Sumptuously shot exteriors of moors and woods, and the gloom-filled interiors of Katherine's mansion-cum-prison (all captured with available light) give the film a perfectly Brontë-esque atmosphere, albeit one with a bit more murdering than your usual bodice-ripper.

After writing the superb screenplays for SICARIO and HELL OR HIGH WATER, expectations for Taylor Sheridan's first time out as both writer and director have been incredibly high. Did he deliver? Yes and no. WIND RIVER's characters and dialogue are decidedly more Hollywood-generic than the above mentioned masterpieces, but there's too much that does work in Sheridan's snowbound thriller to call it a disappointment. The characters aren't all weak, and in the film's meatiest role Jeremy Renner turns in his most satisfying performance since THE HURT LOCKER. Ben Richardson's location cinematography (in a very cold looking Utah) is absolutely stunning, making this required big screen viewing. Seriously, if you're planning on see this, do so on the biggest and best cinema screen you can find. All that aside however, WIND RIVER succeeds mostly because as a high-stakes cops vs criminals thriller it really delivers the goods when it counts. I'm talking gruesome procedural detail, harrowing tension and some cheer-worthy and very cathartic violence. Based on this I think we can expect good things from Sheridan in the future.

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that I've got my gaze firmly fixed on Italian director Luca Guadagnino, whose SUSPIRIA remake is currently in post. His latest film, CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, is a coming of age romance that is as close to perfection as the genre gets. Guadagnino captures that feeling of nostalgia, the bittersweet elation and pain of sexual awakening and first love, but without the sentimentality that so often pervades movies of this type. It's also refreshing to see this well-trodden material depicted from the standpoint of a young gay man, and to that end both Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet (neither of whom are gay as far as I know) create a chemistry that just bleeds off the screen. Pure, honest, unpretentious and moving, this is one hot Italian summer holiday that you need to take.

Sofia Coppola's first genre film is a dreamily languid affair, dripping with as much Southern Gothic atmosphere as its woods drip with Spanish moss. THE BEGUILED, a remake of Don Siegel's 1971 Clint Eastwood starrer, opens with Colin Farrell's wounded Union soldier finding refuge in an almost abandoned girl's school, situated alarmingly close to the Virginia battlefield he just deserted. The remaining Southern belles (a small group of teachers, students and the school's head mistress) are at first wary of their captive guest, but caution for this charmingly hunky enemy soon gives way to lust... and lust to games and betrayal. There's an almost somnambulistic quality to THE BEGUILED, so much so that I found myself drifting off a bit in the first act, but this is obviously calculated to make the jolt that is to come that much more alarming. Elle Fanning, fresh of the set of THE NEON DEMON, and Coppola regular Kirsten Dunst turn in solid performances, but it's Nicole Kidman's austere, repressed madame who steals the show here. Despite good reviews, I don't think this is Coppola's finest moment. It's a good film to be sure, but considering the potential of the subject matter I found it to be a bit slight. That said, there's plenty to enjoy here, with its strongest asset being an often hilarious comedic streak that I wasn't expecting at all.

SUSPIRIA 2017: Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori

As a horror film that can be considered to be the epitome of sensory experience over narrative (even though its fairy tale narrative is much stronger than its critics give it credit for), the real stars of Argento's SUSPIRIA are its sights and sounds. And what sights it has to show you: the neoclassicism (with fascist undertones) of Munich's Königsplatz; the delicate Art Nouveau beauty of that same city's Müller'sche Volksbad; most importantly, the insanely gorgeous facade (based on the Haus zum Walfisch in Freiburg, Germany) and interiors of the Tanz Akademie, constructed at De Paolis Studios in Rome. As shot and lit by Luciano Tovoli, these sets and locations (in perfect accord with Goblin's score) are the defining characteristic of Argento's masterpiece.

I'm one of the heretics who has an optimistic attitude towards Luca Guadagnino's upcoming SUSPIRIA remake. I have faith in the Italian auteur's vision, and I think he may surprise us with a film that is at once respectful to the original, and an occult horror film that is very much his own (Guadagnino's commitment to not settling for a rehash can be seen in his abandonment of Tovoli's primary colour aesthetic).

The one feature that I think we will see carried over from the original (as well as TENEBRAE etc) is the importance Argento placed on architectural setting, and a prowling camera that exploits those spaces to enhance atmosphere, tension and fear. You can see it in Guadagnino's previous filmography, such as 2009's Tilda Swinton starrer, I AM LOVE

I recently did some research on one of SUSPIRIA 2017's primary locations, the Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori in Northern Italy, and the results are very pleasing. The abandoned building, a Belle Époque-era resort situated on a mountain top, is in a state of dereliction and appears to be in pretty poor shape. It'll be interesting to see how much licence the local government gave Guadagnino's set decorators to prepare it for the shoot. Will we see it in this dilapidated state, or will it be restored to the grandeur of Argento's Tanz Akademie? Take a look below.