SusannahMOTHER OF TEARS
April 13th 2009 08:17
Mother of Tears
Directed by Dario Argento
Starring : Asia Argento, Daria Nicolodi and (very briefly) Udo Kier.
At last, the final instalment in Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy. The other two instalments being (as any self-respecting fan of Italian horror will know) the legendary Suspiria and the damnably hard-to-find in Australasia Inferno. I have not seen the latter film. This doesn’t matter much as they don’t follow on from each other in any particular way, though Mother of Tears does contain the odd nod to the previous films, most notably Suspiria.
An excavation in Rome unearths a sarcophagus with an urn chained to it and bound with crosses. A grim, Papal type sends the urn across Rome to an associate of his, hoping for proof that the urn is not what he fears it is. Thing is, if the thing freaks him out so much, why don’t they just rechain it to the coffin and bury it someplace else? Of course the urn is exactly what he thinks it is and his associate never gets the chance to open it because two over-zealous archaeology students dig into it first without taking the necessary precautions (whatever those are). The urn is found to contain three macabre stone statuettes and a garment of deep and unknowable power (which looks to be a cut-off sweatshirt with arcane patterns picked out in sequins across it). One of the gorgeous young archaeologists is swiftly set upon by half-glimpsed demons, a gibbering monkey and a woman with too much eye-liner. The other is Sarah Mandy, our heroine, as played by the eternally smoky-eyed Asia Argento. After fleeing the Museum, Mandy takes solace in the arms of her thoroughly unlikeable lover, Michael.
A wave of violence and madness breaks over Rome: babies are thrown off bridges, people are beaten and stabbed in the streets, cars are smashed, numerous suicides are reported, hordes of feral Catholics gather outside churches demanding exorcism. Due to budgetary restraints these scenes of pandemic violence are relatively brief, but they are still quite effective. Worse still, legions of witches are gathering in Rome; for some reason they all look to have come from a Goth/New Wave concert set sometime in the mid-eighties, and spend much of their time shrieking and cackling. And in a stone catacomb somewhere, lit by eerily flickering candle-light, the Mother of Tears is getting naked and...well, shouting and laughing mostly. She also has not felt the need to change her image much from the mid-eighties, though she has apparently found time for a breast augmentation.
Meanwhile, Mandy is sent from supernatural expert to supernatural expert looking for answers: a search that leads her to Kier’s palsied exorcist, and a lesbian good witch, who informs her that Mandy’s deceased mother was also a white witch and that Mandy has inherited some of her abilities (as well as being followed around by her mother’s phantom presence). The fact that Asia’s real mother takes the ghost part is really rather nice, even though it causes some age-related narrative contradictions.
Finally it all culminates with a viscera-splattered climax in the heart of a labyrinthine catacomb, with Asia caught up in a blood-orgy of naked witches. Along the way we are treated to glimpses of disembowelled children, a woman garrotted with her own intestines, the walking dead, Fulci-esque eye-poppings, a very nasty impaling and a Eurotrash cult icon taking a meat cleaver to the face.
Make no mistake, Mother of Tears is very, very grisly, but there is nothing of the nihilistic and voyeuristic tone of Torture-Porn to the carnage. Rather, there is a sense of glee and absurdity about the whole thing. It feels like Argento is happily indulging himself (and apparently he really, really likes female nudity). Now, Mother of Tears is not Suspiria and it was never going to be. It lacks that film’s fever-dream narrative, saturated colours, sweeping cinematography and kinetic soundtrack. It does, however, still possess Argento’s trademark (and often randomly hilarious) dialogue and elaborate kill-sequences. The cinematography is still lovely, with some very interesting camera-angles creeping in here and there. The colours are rich and vibrant (just not surrealistically intense as they were in Suspiria) and when the blood flows, it flows red. And the pacing is well-judged and compelling. It also boasts a truly great jump-scare about halfway through. There’s a charming sense of self-parody throughout – it is quite clear that Argento is not taking himself all that seriously. The performances are all very subdued, with characters reacting to the most horrendous of spectacles in an oddly low-key fashion.
My only real complaint is with the soundtrack: there isn’t much of one. Sure, there’s the delicate operatic theme that scores several of Asia’s scenes, a bit of spooky breathing to accompany a late-night taxi-ride (very Suspiria) and the odd flicker of an electronic beat here and there. But where’s Goblin when you need them? I miss the pounding tribal pulses, the eerie synth-noodlings, the multi-layered whisperings, the wailing wordless opera. Music was always a huge part of the hypnotic, dark power of an Argento film. The credits close out with a hilarious-in-a-good-way metal theme credited to Claudio Simonetti and Dani Filth but if only there was more of that sort of thing throughout.
Instead of horror-as-art Mother of Tears is a great, glorious, gruesome, trashy spectacle. Perhaps it’s horror-as-kitsch, or horror-as-pop-art, I don’t know. All I know is Argento is still in love with the genre and having the time of his life. And that makes me very happy indeed.
Directed by Dario Argento
Starring : Asia Argento, Daria Nicolodi and (very briefly) Udo Kier.
At last, the final instalment in Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy. The other two instalments being (as any self-respecting fan of Italian horror will know) the legendary Suspiria and the damnably hard-to-find in Australasia Inferno. I have not seen the latter film. This doesn’t matter much as they don’t follow on from each other in any particular way, though Mother of Tears does contain the odd nod to the previous films, most notably Suspiria.
An excavation in Rome unearths a sarcophagus with an urn chained to it and bound with crosses. A grim, Papal type sends the urn across Rome to an associate of his, hoping for proof that the urn is not what he fears it is. Thing is, if the thing freaks him out so much, why don’t they just rechain it to the coffin and bury it someplace else? Of course the urn is exactly what he thinks it is and his associate never gets the chance to open it because two over-zealous archaeology students dig into it first without taking the necessary precautions (whatever those are). The urn is found to contain three macabre stone statuettes and a garment of deep and unknowable power (which looks to be a cut-off sweatshirt with arcane patterns picked out in sequins across it). One of the gorgeous young archaeologists is swiftly set upon by half-glimpsed demons, a gibbering monkey and a woman with too much eye-liner. The other is Sarah Mandy, our heroine, as played by the eternally smoky-eyed Asia Argento. After fleeing the Museum, Mandy takes solace in the arms of her thoroughly unlikeable lover, Michael.
Meanwhile, Mandy is sent from supernatural expert to supernatural expert looking for answers: a search that leads her to Kier’s palsied exorcist, and a lesbian good witch, who informs her that Mandy’s deceased mother was also a white witch and that Mandy has inherited some of her abilities (as well as being followed around by her mother’s phantom presence). The fact that Asia’s real mother takes the ghost part is really rather nice, even though it causes some age-related narrative contradictions.
Finally it all culminates with a viscera-splattered climax in the heart of a labyrinthine catacomb, with Asia caught up in a blood-orgy of naked witches. Along the way we are treated to glimpses of disembowelled children, a woman garrotted with her own intestines, the walking dead, Fulci-esque eye-poppings, a very nasty impaling and a Eurotrash cult icon taking a meat cleaver to the face.
Make no mistake, Mother of Tears is very, very grisly, but there is nothing of the nihilistic and voyeuristic tone of Torture-Porn to the carnage. Rather, there is a sense of glee and absurdity about the whole thing. It feels like Argento is happily indulging himself (and apparently he really, really likes female nudity). Now, Mother of Tears is not Suspiria and it was never going to be. It lacks that film’s fever-dream narrative, saturated colours, sweeping cinematography and kinetic soundtrack. It does, however, still possess Argento’s trademark (and often randomly hilarious) dialogue and elaborate kill-sequences. The cinematography is still lovely, with some very interesting camera-angles creeping in here and there. The colours are rich and vibrant (just not surrealistically intense as they were in Suspiria) and when the blood flows, it flows red. And the pacing is well-judged and compelling. It also boasts a truly great jump-scare about halfway through. There’s a charming sense of self-parody throughout – it is quite clear that Argento is not taking himself all that seriously. The performances are all very subdued, with characters reacting to the most horrendous of spectacles in an oddly low-key fashion.
My only real complaint is with the soundtrack: there isn’t much of one. Sure, there’s the delicate operatic theme that scores several of Asia’s scenes, a bit of spooky breathing to accompany a late-night taxi-ride (very Suspiria) and the odd flicker of an electronic beat here and there. But where’s Goblin when you need them? I miss the pounding tribal pulses, the eerie synth-noodlings, the multi-layered whisperings, the wailing wordless opera. Music was always a huge part of the hypnotic, dark power of an Argento film. The credits close out with a hilarious-in-a-good-way metal theme credited to Claudio Simonetti and Dani Filth but if only there was more of that sort of thing throughout.
Instead of horror-as-art Mother of Tears is a great, glorious, gruesome, trashy spectacle. Perhaps it’s horror-as-kitsch, or horror-as-pop-art, I don’t know. All I know is Argento is still in love with the genre and having the time of his life. And that makes me very happy indeed.
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