Lush, erotic imagery is a treat for voyeurs in giallo film AMER
AMER (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, 2010)
Cinema Village
22 East Twelfth St. between Fifth Ave. & University Pl.
Opens Friday, October 29
212-924-3363
www.cinemavillage.com
www.olivefilms.com
Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s complex genre exercise, AMER, revisits and reimagines the Italian giallo films from the 1960 and ’70s, made by such masters as Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, and Mario Bava. Hyperstylized with deep, lush colors, minimal dialogue, and surreal, erotic imagery, AMER, which means bitter, is a different kind of coming-of-age story, told in three sections. The protagonist, Ana, is first seen as a young girl (Cassandra Forêt) trying to avoid the woman in black living in the closet and wondering if her decrepitly dead grandfather will wake up. In the second part, Ana (Charlotte Eugène-Guibbaud) is a teenager discovering her sexuality and its power as she walks seductively by a motorcycle gang, the wind gently lifting the hem of her dress. In the final section, Ana (Marie Bos) is a grown woman returning to her ancestral home — and the ghosts and memories she left behind. Cattet and Forzani favor extreme close-ups and voyeuristic shots, with eyes peering through keyholes and looking at Ana with various types of desire. While they nail the style — they even use music from earlier giallo films — they are severely lacking in substance. What narrative there is gets particularly derailed in the second segment, replaced by uncomfortable scenes that feel like a separate short film or a European advertisement; in fact, the filmmakers have spent most of their career making shorts. AMER is beautiful to look at and listen to, with danger lurking around every corner, but it tries too hard to be true to its genre forebears’ shortcomings instead of improving on it.