The Stendhal Syndrome is said to be a disorder where, upon viewing works of art, a person suffers from chills, anxiety attacks, and hallucinations where they believe they're actually in the paintings themselves. Don't ask me how real or common this disorder is since I'm not a doctor, but it sure makes for an interesting case study in Dario Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome.
Anna Manni (Asia Argento) is an Italian police detective who goes to an art museum due to an phone tip from a woman claiming that she knows a serial rapist and murderer will be there. Once there, Anna suffers from an attack of Stendhal and ends up getting knocked out. When she comes to, a man is there and he follows her back to her room, rapes her, and kidnaps her, forcing her to watch him murder another victim. She flees from the scene, but the worst is yet to come.
It's hard to talk about this film without spoiling everything, but let's just say that the character of Anna goes through several transitions throughout the film. The 1st act of the film is pretty gripping and the 2nd act isn't terrible either, but by the 3rd act, you get the feeling like they don't know how to wrap this up so they're just stalling and making up stuff to distract us from the fact that the movie hasn't cleared for landing yet. By the end, you'll definitely be left scratching your head and wishing they'd have just ended it a half hour sooner.
Asia Argento isn't ideally suited for the role either and only seems to really come to life during the 2nd act where she adopts a touch, butch persona. She seems uncomfortable in the 1st and 3rd acts. There are also some questionable CGI effects throughout that take you out of the movie and it's not as stylish as many of Dario Argento's other works.
