Amer. 2009. France. Directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. In French; English subtitles. 35mm print courtesy of the filmmakers. 90 min.
The title is French for “bitter,” but this provocative, sensational debut is anything but. An oneiric, eroticized homage to 1970s Italian giallo horror movies reimagined as an avant-garde trance film, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s pastiche tour de force plays out a delirious, enigmatic, almost wordless death-dance of fear and desire. Its three movements, each in a different style, correspond to the childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of its female protagonist—and that’s all you need to know. Drawing its stylized, hyperbolic gestures from the playbooks of Mario Bava, Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, and Brian De Palma and taking them into a realm of near-abstraction, Amer has genre in the blood. Its bold widescreen compositions, super-focused sound, emphatic music (lifted from original giallo soundtracks), and razor-sharp cuts make for an outrageous and intoxicating cinematic head trip.
Please note:
The September 4th screening will be preceded by the following short film:
La fée sanguinaire. Belgium. 1968. Directed by Roland Lethem. La fée sanguinaire (“the Bloodthirsty Fairy”), a remarkable work of radical avant-garde cinema from the 1960s, uses body horror as a vengeful threat to the world’s male establishment. It is said to be the first on-screen castration fantasy. 27 min.
The September 5th screening will be preceded by the following short film:
Les souffrances d’un oeuf meurtri. Belgium. 1967. Directed by Roland Lethem. The experimental director’s symbolic meditation on birth, desire, and religious censorship was greeted with jeers when it premiered at the legendary EXPRMNTL 4 in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium, a festival that also included work by Michael Snow, Martin Scorsese, and Yoko Ono. 19 min.