Dark Glasses (2022)

aka Black Glasses

Original title: Occhiali neri

As if two-fisted prostitute Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli) didn’t have enough trouble with fighting off horrible costumers, she becomes the next target of a serial killer murdering sex workers. Diana manages to escape a first murder attempt via a car chase, but ends up crashing into a car of a Chinese family. The parents of the family are killed or lethally wounded, and only a little boy we will later learn to be named Chin (Andrea Zhang) survives. Diana herself is blinded in the crash, while the killer gets away unscathed and unidentified.

Being a rather tough cookie, our heroine only falls into depression over her new disability for a very short time, and becomes independent again very quickly indeed with the help of public service lady Rita (Asia Argento) and her very own seeing eye/attack dog. Diana feels guilty about the accident and visits little Chin in his orphanage. During this, she impresses him so greatly, he soon turns up at her doorstep, asking her for shelter until his mother gets out of the coma she’s clearly never going to get out of. Diana has no problem harbouring an escaped orphan, and the duo buddy up quite nicely.

Alas, the killer – remember him? – still has his mind set upon murdering Diana. Surely, now that she’s blind and taking care of a little boy, she’s going to be easier to kill…

Most viewers seem to loathe this late entry into the career of the once great Dario Argento with a passion, so much so I found myself somewhat surprised by actually being entertained by it, sometimes even charmed by its wackier elements. But then, if I remember correctly, I did even find quite a few things to enjoy about Argento’s Dracula.

This giallo is certainly a technically and formally much superior proposition to that movie. Argento doesn’t seem to be in as wildly and trashy an experimental mood as he was there, but he has not returned to the blandness of Giallo or The Card Player either. Though this is still far from the style and beauty of Argento’s classic movies, he does seem to attempt to return to some of the aesthetic pleasures of his past. So here, you can at the very least witness some technically accomplished stalk and suspense sequences, quite a handful of carefully framed shots, and a film that has a degree of visual flow and drive again. Compared to the giallos from Argento’s bad phase, this feels not so much like a return to form, but like a return to genuine interest in the aesthetic forms and joys that were always Argento’s great strengths.

Of course, if one really wants to, one should have no problem smacking Dark Glasses down for the often highly peculiar ways its script finds to get Diana and Chin into trouble, ways rather off the trodden paths of plot logic and reason; it’s not so much that no character here ever makes good decisions, it’s that everyone always makes the most bizarre ones imaginable. Also, there are snakes in the weirdest places. The thing is, narrative logic has never been one of Argento’s strengths, and I really can’t bring myself to criticize the man for exactly the dream logic I’ve so often praised about his films. Particularly since the script puts quite a bit of effort into developments becoming increasingly intense-hysterical in a way that may or may not be Argento poking a bit of fun at himself, or just the great old man being himself very much indeed.

There are also some rather new developments in Argento land, namely a streak of friendly sentimentality that comes to the fore in the whole Chin business (which it is best to simply accept as the film delivers it instead of thinking about it, too hard or at all) as well as in his continued love for murderous animals as seen in the dog business; though there, the sentimentality is obviously spiced with a bit of gore. Argento’s gotten so soft, Asia is only brutally murdered in this one.

That’s what we call “Altersmilde” in Germany.

On Dario Argento's Dracula 3D (2012)

I'm pretty sure Argento's version of Dracula will automatically get the critical drubbing all his late period films get, be they great like Mother of Tears, abominations like Giallo and The Card Player, or fine workman-like efforts like his Masters of Horror episodes. Argento shares the fate of his co-sufferers in directing horror films like George Romero and John Carpenter of having turned their once rabid fanbases against themselves by continuing to change their styles. And we all know by now that "fans" only stay "fans" as long as you give them exactly what they expect, lest they turn into a highly enthusiastic lynch mob that wouldn't even realize if you made the best movie of your career. Thusly, the Internet has turned my private definition of "fan" into "person who hates something so much (s)he won't stop shouting about how horrible it is", but I digress.

Not that Dracula (3D) is the best movie of Argento's career. It is, in fact, a rather curious artefact that attempts - and perhaps half of the time succeeds - to build a luridly dream-like mood out of a mixture of operatic theatricality, cheapness, misguided uses of modern technology, an improbably bad soundtrack, and plain weirdness. When this works, Dracula becomes rather magical, like a pulpy version of that weird vampire sex dream (vampirism is all about sex and domination for Argento here) you once had after reading Bram Stoker and drinking too much red wine. When it fails, Dracula turns into a horrible mess half bad soap opera, half gore flick made by a teenager.

The most curious thing about it is how easily the film slips from one extreme to the next, with nearly awe-inspiring moments of Gothic horror turning into poor cheese and back again at the drop of a hat. Really everything in Dracula is changing from one moment to the next in this way - the acting (with generally lovely actors like Asia Argento, Thomas "Dracula" Kretschmann and Rutger Hauer as the least interesting Van Helsing imaginable) is convincing in one sentence, stiff in the next, and melodramatically overdone in the next, the special effects permanently meander between decent practical effects, utterly horrid CG most SyFy channel movies were ashamed of, and beautiful and imaginative CG, while the script wanders between homages to every other Dracula adaptation in existence, clever changes to the original (for example, not taking the plot to England doesn't just put away the xenophobic subtext, and is good for the budget but also makes the film dramatically tighter, or rather would make it tighter if this were a film interested in it; and I love what the film in the end does with the old, terrible "Mina is the reincarnation of Dracula's wife" bit), random weird shit I can't help but approve of (I'll just say "mantis"), and stuff that is of little use however you look at it.

Locations and sets are at times beautiful and atmospheric, and at other times so ill lit they have the fake, plastic-y look of a doll house. In this Dracula, the sublime and the ridiculous don't just go hand in hand, they change from one into the other like a hyperactive werewolf. I'm actually pretty sure Argento does this all on purpose (for he can hardly not see it), but what his purpose is - apart from making it much easier for people to hate on the film without having to think about it - I surely don't know.

What I do know is that, even though Argento's Dracula surely isn't his best film, or even a good one, it is a film containing as much personality, strangeness and idiosyncrasy as I could have wished for. It's certainly not the film I would have wanted Argento to make, but then I'm convinced that if you're expecting any artist, in whatever part of his or her career, to do the exact sort of thing you want from her or him, you're doing art appreciation wrong.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,thoughts,dario argento,horror,asia argento,rutger hauer,thomas kretschmann

In short: Love Bites (2001)

Not to be confused with other rather forgettable films called Love Bites.

The young Parisian Antoine (Guillaume Canet) spends his nights freeloading at any party and club he can talk himself into, and sleeps through the day in the fitness club where he lives.

One night, he pretends to be the friend of a certain absent Jordan (Orazio Massaro) to get into an upper class party. A mysterious older man (Jean-Marie Winling) is very interested in their supposed connection, since he is trying to get a hold of Jordan. Even after hearing that Antoine doesn't even know how that Jordan person looks, the weird stranger still decides to hire the nightlife specialist to find the guy. For one million Franc, Antoine can hardly decline the offer.

But even with the help of his friend Etienne (Gerard Lanvin), who is well-connected in the world of the sleazy and the slimy, Jordan is a very difficult man to find. The things Antoine hears about his target aren't too promising anyway - he seems to be in the business of biting people in the neck. And he's only ever seen by night. My, whatever might his secret be?

Finally, Antoine manages to run into Jordan's sister Violaine (Asia Argento), herself known for sometimes taking a bite out of people. Nonetheless (and not all that surprising seeing that she is played by Asia Argento after all), our hero lands in a hotel room with her, but being drugged up and finding himself scratched and roughed up on the street the next day was probably not exactly what he was after.

Still, he is clearly fascinated by Violaine, and isn't even willing to stop his investigation when it is starting to get rather dangerous.

Love Bites could have been quite a film - a comedy about vampires as part of the Parisian nightlife sounds promising enough, at least.

Unfortunately, neither the film's script nor its director Antoine de Caunes seem to have much of an idea what to do with their basic concept, sidelining the vampire angle completely, instead concentrating on showing us Canet's Antoine not doing much in a lot of bars and clubs. The actual plot could be condensed to about thirty minutes of film.

This is not to say that the rest of the film is completely forgettable, but for every neat (if irrelevant for either mood, plot, character or theme) little joke and amusing absurdity, there are two or three scenes whose use in the film I can find no explanation for.

It would probably be easier if I'd find Antoine as charming as he is supposed to be, but Canet plays him with a combination of smarminess and blandness that is never anything else but punchable.

So the main weight of the acting has to be carried by Asia and Gerard Lanvin. Unfortunately, the former might be as sexy as ever, but isn't allowed to do much else. A small wonder when you keep in mind how seldom she is actually present, because another scene of nothing happening is deemed more interesting. Lanvin for his part is just the friendly character actor giving support.

Still, I found myself mildly entertained by the film - the scenes which work really do it quite well, and I'm always happy to find a comedy that doesn't absolutely annoy me.

Just don't expect more of the film than mild entertainment, and you're good.

 

Technorati-Tags: french movies,comedy,horror,asia argento,in short