Amer

The childhood segment that opens this, I felt, was a ten-star movie, a superbly strange horror seen in bewildering fragments through the eyes of a child. What especially makes it is the dreamlike giallo humour, particularly on show in Argento's Inferno, of the character advancing oblivious no matter how nightmarish and Freudianly creepy things become, and no matter how clumsily they themselves behave.

At the end of this part, sadly, as if not quite knowing what to do with the brilliant potential it's found, the film dissolves into abstraction, followed by two rather more mundane sequences from adolescence and adulthood.

There's still a lot to enjoy here. I really like it, especially that, at a time when so much art-house film feels leadenly stuck in numb, muted-colour naturalism, this is utterly wild in its deployment of current film and editing tech. If you're doubting whether movies can really astonish visually after the demise of celluloid, take heart. There are whole new worlds to discover here and Amer, while also owing much to the past, points the way.

Too bad then it applies this sensibility to more and more boringly disorienting strings of extreme close-ups, especially of eyes, and, mixed in the the bravura imagery, some that is really cheap and tacky looking, like student video in which they've tried to dress things up by bleaching it out too much and adding a sepia tint.

It feels like desperate and probably fairly conscious padding, because, unfortunately, there isn't anywhere near enough substance in the later sections to carry the day. Given that the first segment so perfectly captures the strangeness of a child's perception, a huge opportunity seems to me to have been missed to do the same for adolescence and adulthood. The closest we get is an acknowledgement that teenagers are very interested in sex, and, well, duh.

Amer is an example of pure cinema if ever there was one. It's a movie with extremely little plot and very minimal dialogue. While on one level it's a homage to the Italian giallo film, it's at least equally an avant-garde experimental piece. If you could imagine a collision between Suspiria, A Lizard In A Woman's Skin and Meshes of the Afternoon you wouldn't be too far off the mark. It's similarity to the latter Maya Deren film is where it might be problematic to those who think they are in for a true homage to the giallo, as this is a movie that is more of a mood piece than anything else. Admittedly it's a pretty dark mood but nevertheless this is first and foremost an experimental work. Your tolerance level for narrative-free avant-garde cinema will be the deciding factor in whether you like this or not.

It's about a girl called Ana. And it's divided into three sections: childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The first part is the most impressive; it's a deeply creepy segment about the child at a highly traumatic moment in her life, involving her dead grandfather and her witnessing her parents having sex. It's full of surreal nightmare imagery that recalls some shots directly lifted from Suspiria, with the requisite intense colours – greens, blues, reds – with a creepy soundtrack of sighs that also recalls that famous old film. The second part loses the momentum a bit; it switches to a sunny outdoor locale and has the teenage Ana accompany her mother in a trip to the local town, where she seems to experience some sexual awakenings. The final part has Ana arriving at the run down family home again; this part incorporates some of the fetishistic giallo motifs that you might expect.

Amer is a highly stylised film. The cinematography is constantly inventive and artistic. There is a preponderance of close ups; in particular eyes and skin. The compositions are beautiful and the use of widescreen is excellent. When you see a film like this it does make you shake your head sadly when a film such as The King's Speech is nominated for best cinematography at the Oscars ceremony. As fine a film as it is the cinematography in that film, and most winners of this category in the Academy Awards, is solid yet so safe and unremarkable. This little film from Europe wins hands down against any contender from this year's Oscars in that category. But films like Amer are never nominated for Academy Awards and never will be. Rant over.

The film features a purely retro music soundtrack from the likes of Bruno Nicolai, Ennio Morricone and Stelvio Cipriani; the opening piece being from the Sergio Martino giallo film The Case of the Scorpion's Tail. And I suppose that opening would make you think this film is going to be a straight homage but as I have said it really isn't. Amer is most certainly not a film for everyone it has to be admitted but if you like gialli and avant-garde cinema then I think you would do well to at least give it a try.

I have to agree with jan_ulalume's review in that this may be avant-guard to those who have never seen such imagery, but to those who have (in essence) grown up on this stuff, it is more akin to a "giallo's best hits".

With the "camera looking through the clear lightbulb shot" from SUSPIRIA (along with the colored lights directed onto people and key subject areas), Fulci's preoccupation with eyes and nose bridges, even encompassing Bava and countless other Italian filmographers filmic visual ques (WHO SAW HER DIE's funeral veil POV), like the former reviewer states it becomes over-saturation of style to the point of becoming ridiculous.

I will say that the first segment with the little girl is the best, simply due to the fact that there seems to be more of a coherent story that one can follow compared to the other two segments, which focus primarily on visuals alluding to some set of visual metaphors (even Zalman King wouldn't go this far), not to mention that the last segment's "twist" is (regardless of how predictable it may be to those familiar with these things) isn't built up very well at all.

Regardless, I would still suggest it (at least the blu-ray, as the clarity may help the viewing experience a bit) at least just to take it in. Maybe with some editing and some more giallo music (as the second and third acts are nearly music-less, which hurts those sections quite a bit for me) the movie could come across better...

Act 1 is brilliant - a terrifying, sensual, nightmarish homage to Dario Argento. Act 2 is boring filler. Act 3 has a nasty torture scene and is better than the second act, but still feels pointless.

I am a fan of Argento and the influences of this film. To be honest though I found this film to be good for the first section, the rest was dull and weak. The lack of story could be accepted by the art house feel of the film but that's not always an excuse for poor films. If I hadn't been a fan of what are considered superior genre films then maybe yes I would have seen the vision and delivery. To finish, but not reveal this brief review, the last section is shot in daylight dark. There is really bad light filters used which add a cheapness and only add to the already confusing story line. I would suggest a better example of a similar style film would be the Jess Franco film Eugenie. Better still Betty Blue.