Now that she’s arrived, she wastes little time in impressing the school’s legendary choreographer, Swinton’s swanlike but stern Madame Blanc. (It would be easy to underestimate Johnson based on her starring role in the “50 Shades” trilogy, but she is an actress of understated, unexpected power who continues to display her versatility.) Susie had dreamed of studying there since she was a child growing up in a religiously conservative family on an Ohio farm. Johnson uses her light, girlish voice-which carries hints of her mother, Melanie Griffith’s-to her advantage in the film’s early scenes as a shy but ambitious new student at the Helena Markos Dance Company. And yet, evil is obviously lurking, gathering itself and finding ways to rear its head. (The co-stars of “A Bigger Splash” reunite with Guadagnino, once again bringing the alluring alchemy of their contrasting screen presences.) “Call Me by Your Name” cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom soaks every scene in sadness and fear-even moments of theoretical creative joy are awash in an avant-garde gloom. Truly, watching Swinton and Johnson stare each other down in dance spaces and restaurants in an array of brown and gray period garb, their psychic connection piercing the ever-present cigarette smoke, is enough of a satisfying meal. That feels like an entirely different film, one that blends ambitiously yet awkwardly with the story at the stylishly rotting core of “Suspiria.” But just as he’s building a steady, suspenseful momentum, Guadagnino too often cuts away to the tumult encompassing all of Berlin: a city split in two, struggling to reestablish itself post-Nazism, but still being torn apart by attacks from the leftist Baader-Meinhof Group. The fact that “Suspiria” boasts a powerful, predominately female cast – led by Johnson, Mia Goth, Angela Winkler, Ingrid Caven and multiple Tilda Swintons – certainly speaks to the formidable nature of feminine strength. The film aims to say something about the futility of trying to escape the past, despite fervent efforts at rebirth. The problem is that while “Suspiria” has a vivid and specific sense of place, it also strives to exist in the outside world with a larger historical context in a way that never connects. And for the most part, he succeeds, even as he frustratingly undermines himself with an overstuffed script from David Kajganich (who also wrote the screenplay for Guadagnino’s “ A Bigger Splash”). Instead, he’s in it for the long haul, insidiously working his way under your skin to disturb you deeply. He could have shocked you quickly with cheap scares. “Suspiria” is as striking and severe as the director’s “ Call Me by Your Name,” the best film of 2017, was warm and welcoming. It will all explode into a blood-red orgy eventually, but for a long time, we are fully ensconced in the chilly discomfort of perpetually rainy 1977 Berlin. For a while, Dakota Johnson’s long, red braid is the film’s primary source of color. But Guadagnino takes his time in exploring the cruel contours of this place, an Escher painting of stone stairways and dark halls where pained sighs linger and wicked laughter echoes. And the score from Radiohead genius Thom Yorke creates an inescapable feeling of melancholy and mystery his haunting, three-quarter time piano theme, titled “Suspirium,” plays over images of a woman’s body being lovingly cleansed as she lies in her sickbed. Guadagnino creates an unsettling mood off the top, with a soaked and sallow young dancer dashing into her shrink’s office, spewing paranoid babble. So if you love Argento’s lush and lurid Giallo phantasmagoria, you might wonder what exactly is happening here-or rather, when. The two films share a setting, a few character names and a basic premise-that a prestigious German dance academy is a front for a witches’ coven, because of course it is-and that’s about it. Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” isn’t so much a remake of the 1977 Dario Argento horror classic as it is a seriously insane (and seriously serious) expansion on the original.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |