Amer

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.

When I included Amer in a short list of films I was eagerly anticipating in 2010, I wrote that I was looking forward to "ostentatious cameras that go on a discovery of psychosexual nightmares, a stylish violence, jazzy grooves". I'm a big fan of Italian genre cinema, especially gialli, for me they fulfill the needs comic-books do in others. When I say I'm a fan, I mean that when Stelvio Cipriani's song La Polizia Ha Le Mani Legate (originally part of Cipriani's score for Roma Violenta) finished playing in Amer's end credits, I rummaged through my cd collection to find it.

But, even as I was writing that a few months ago, Amer already had a reputation as more than a giallo film, "arthouse" people insisted, which intrigued me more. So, does Amer reward the giallo fan with the wink of film reference, or is the giallo only the trope of an expression intended for a different audience?

To go back to my appreciation for the giallo as comic book, it's the mentality of the colorful panel that appeals to me, the vivid bits of casual violence to strike a chord and be forgotten after the next page, the indulgence on something that reaches only as deep as the excitement it provides. To put so much effort or go through all the trouble for the pleasure of something momentary, this exaggeration is essentially the province of youth, where the fling of a few days burns with the passion of true love. In this sense, the giallo rejuvenates me.

That in mind, Amer is at once an apotheosis and a keelhaul of the panel, an overkill of shots capturing small details, of closeups of eyes or reflections or bits of the human anatomy. It's a world come alive through the senses, by a child overhearing conversations from behind closed doors, or a young girl feeling the first tingling of a booming sexuality in her skin. There's very little dialogue and this appeals to me, because the convoluted plots were always my least favorite aspect of the giallo.

But if Amer is not pushed forward by people talking, does it establish other means of communicating this story of sexual awakening and repression, the schism that follows from a child discovering a cruel world or a teenager being denied that discovery on her own?

I'll say yes, but with reservations. Still, what's important for me, is the tweaking of the filmed image to see is there another way to make cinema, the nature of an experiment whose results can only be appreciated in the future. Better said, if we peel a cabbage we get the core, but if we peel an onion? Some will say we get nothing, but we've done the peeling and we've transformed the onion, so can we really say that? The cinema of Amer is that peeling.

Two things particularly stand out for me here in this cinematic depiction of trauma.

One is the root of it, seen through the kaleidoscope of a child's awestruck imagination. A child's feverish nightmare shot in the otherworldly cyans and magentas of Mario Bava, where disfigured old men and strange hooded figures reach out to the camera. This is probably the most horrific part of the movie.

The other is the cause and effect of the teenage girl's sexual awakening. The directors explore this with a marvellous sense of exaggeration, of a complete fetishization of sexuality and the human body. When the young girl comes across a group of bikers, we get blurry closeups of chrome, of throats undulating or the trickle of perspiration, of buckles and boots. The girl approaches them almost solemnly, clinging to her short summer dress, with an air of fearful apprehension and the irrepressible instinct of a moth drawn to a flame. Before her discovery can be consumated, her overbearing mother shows up to slap her for the offense and take her away. Simple, crude some may say, but brilliant in getting a point across.

It's in the film's conclusion that we find the giallo lurking in the shadows of a ruined mansion, where the black-gloved hand of the killer slashes the dark. The directors give us the killing hand but with a twist, another contraption of the giallo.

What about the intended audience though? I feel that Amer will appeal more to fans of the sexual psychodrama of Repulsion, than the fan who will seek out a film like Amuck for the profound pleasure of watching giallo queens Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri make out on the same bed. The lurid tradition of Sergio Martino is only honored in the selection of epochal musis by the likes of Bruno Nicolai, Morricone or Cipriani.

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...

Yeah, I'm really not a fan of these 'style over substance' style movies. I saw this film's follow-up, THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS, before I saw this, so I had some idea of what to expect, but still this film's almost entire lack of storyline and coherent narrative was enough to finish me off. I get what the filmmakers are doing, and I'm a huge fan of the giallo genre, but this just smacks of pretentiousness and comes across as completely pointless.

AMER tells the visual story of a girl whose life is chronicled in various parts. She's subjected to a terrifying experience as a child, and then her perfect life as an adult is brought into jeopardy by the intervention of a mysterious stranger. There's no more to it than that; this is an entirely visual production, with thousands of cuts and edits designed to make the most beautiful experience ever.

The images are great, and the soundtrack is hugely evocative, but the whole thing lacks so much substance that it's a real chore to sit through and it seems to go on forever and ever. This is from a guy who's been enjoying the art films of the likes of Werner Herzog and Kim Ki-duk. But AMER is a case of the 'Emperor's new clothes'; the lights are on, and they're very pretty, but nobody's home.