Scarlet Diva

While not a masterpiece, this movie has some cult potential. It's weird and cringe but in a charming way, just like Asia. You know what you're in for.

Although I have to admit, I watched this movie largely out of the prurient interest of seeing Dario Argento's lovely daughter naked and engaging in (reportedly unsimulated) sex scenes, I was genuinely surprised at how good this movie was. While Asia A. has said in various interviews that as a director she has been most influenced by her father, on one hand, and maverick NYC auteur Abel Ferrara, on the other, she demonstrates here, in her directorial-debut, a personal warmth and emotional honesty that is generally absent in the stylistic excesses of the former and usually lost in the sheer pathos of the latter. True, the movie does straddle and (occasionally crosses)the thin line between personal and self-indulgent, but generally it is a moving, semi-autobiographical story of a young woman who has had to, as Lou Reed, once put it "grow up in public". Strangely, the movie isn't really that erotic. One of the most memorable scenes, typical of the movie as whole, has the director/actress completely naked, shaving her armpits in the mirror. While she looks great, of course, there's nothing really sexy or contrived about this scene. She's just a normal girl, totally unself-conscious, going through a morning routine. Asia A. has been often treated by the tabloid press as an Italian version of Paris Hilton or some other scandal queen, but what she may very well turn out to be is another Sofia Coppola, emerging from the shadow of past scandals and a famous father to become a respected artist in her own right.

Asia Argento, daughter of the legendary horror movie creator Dario Argento, is barely known in the USA aside for a couple of art house movies and the bad movie but commercial success of XXX where she is the only character that really acts.

Even when I saw a few of her movies, mostly horror fare where I could not appreciate her look mixes of a timid person trying to seem strong. Something that make her lovely even when she is not an aggressive beautiful as other Italian actresses like Monica Belucci, Agostina Belly, Laura Antonelli or Ornella Mutti.

Thanks to the generosity of movie distribution, this movie was shown in Miami probably one week in some hidden theatre and of course I was not able to catch it until mysteriously was released on DVD just a few weeks later. Well this is the first time I really grateful I enjoyed the movie in the intimacy and calm of my home instead of a probably empty theatre. Why ?. Just because after seeing the whole 90 minutes, I heard Asia's enlightening interview and after that I saw the movie again but this time only with the director's commentary. Something I never did before in any of the more than 300 movies I own.

Is SCARLET DIVA such a great movie ?. Well no; it really is an amazing experience. The story is not really so. Just a famous actress trying to direct her first movie call SCARLET DIVA and moving in different levels of the industry looking for support. Is also the desperation to find love in an environment were it not exist. The relation among the different bits or scenes is barely existent. Is like witnessing a huge depressing moment in a person you care, and things did not get any makeover.

Two important facts here; first you care about the character because you realize the protagonist is living in a real hell; which paradoxically is the life she choused.

Second it requires a great courage to shot most of the things this movie shows. I am not talking only about the interracial sex or the substance abuse or the humiliations of being in the show business; but also the fantasies, the traumas and your own family and personal dysfunctions.

However, self pity is avoided and risks taken all over. I never saw an actress nude in front of a mirror shaving her arm pits and creating a tender moment out of it. It also requires a lot of guts for a women/actress to accept that she never made love before; because she was always a whore.

Even when most of the things are real, Asia avoids real names and did not point fingers. However, in the commentary, something worth hearing because of the frankness she describes all real and no so real things, she mention several real names (mostly art house and independents like Vincent Gallo) stating how little help or how they betrayed her friendship and the little collaboration on her movie.

The comment itself , is worth almost as much as the movie. It looks so natural and sincere that; if it is not true, she really deserves and Oscar for that.

Scarlet Diva is Asia Argento's first serious attempt at directing a feature-length movie after a brief but successful acting career. It tells the story of Anna Battista and her first serious attempt at directing a feature-length movie after a brief but successful acting career. Sounds like another example of every debut film turning out autobiographical and, in most cases, pretentious and self-indulgent? Yes indeed, Scarlet Diva is all of these.

25-year-old Asia Argento learnt her trade on set with her father, Dario Argento, Italy's very own horror-film specialist. Having starred in many of her dad's gore-fests – but also in more mainstream films like La Reine Margot or last year's B. Monkey – she is now out to make a name for herself in the writing/directing business. While she comes a cropper in the writing department (the story is very simple, and some of the dialogue is excruciatingly self-important), it has to be said that the film has style, of a kind. Its use of video footage, the fast editing and the pumping soundtrack go some way towards deflecting attention from both the miserable script and the inept cast. Apart, that is, from Ms Argento herself who, in the title role as Anna Battista aka Scarlet Diva, somehow manages to keep her head above water as the rest of one of the worst acting ensembles for some time (the scenes in Los Angeles are especially bad) go under and stay under.

In both form and content, there are parallels between Scarlet Diva and Baise-moi, the French scandal-film par excellence. We are given (relatively) graphic rape scenes, a whole sex-drugs-and-rock ‘n roll attitude, and the main character(s) portrayed as victim(s) of the system (in this case the movie production system). Although any comparison with a thoroughly distasteful product like Baise-moi may well have put you off giving the film a chance, not everything about Scarlet Diva is wholly bad. The improvised home-movie style gives the film a pacey and refreshingly amateurish feel that is pretty rare in cinema nowadays. But even that faint praise cannot make up for the sheer pretentiousness and exhibitionism that Asia Argento treats herself to. And there's some dodgy religious imagery to boot. A little more subtlety would certainly have done a lot to improve this film, a film incidentally that would never have seen the light of day had the leading lady not received some timely financial help from daddy and his associates.

A typical debut film, then, from a first-time director, but still interesting enough, if only for us diehard film fans and for any wannabe anarchists out there.

Not since Marlene Dietrich (of Blue Angel) has a woman come on the silver screen with such raw sexuality. As Lola Lola, Dietrich used men to for her own advancement and amusement; today, as woman have have made tremendous social advances, they are using themselves for their own amusement, such as Anna Battista in Scarlet Diva. If Asia Argento is course in XXX, she is an anarchist in Scarlet Diva, less of an autobiography, more of an example of 21st century voyeurism. Asia has taken all the tricks learned from her father, Dario, and using them to create a slice of life look at an actress trying to figure out what she wants -- blah, blah, blah. No one wants that type of insight about Scarlet Diva. Possible viewers just want to know if it is as sexual as the the poster teases. Oh, yes. The movie is sexual and brutal. This ain't American Pie, where sex is a nice package one can buy at Wal-mart. Sex in Scarlet Diva is shown for its many facets -- as a way to kill time, to punish, to rape, or to connect. Viewers of Scarlet Diva will be f***ed. Some will claim to have been raped but others will thank Asia for the ride.