Tiresia (2003)

Director: Bertrand Bonello

Screenplay: Bertrand Bonello and Luca Fazzi

Cast: Laurent Lucas as Terranova / Père François; Clara Choveaux as Tiresia I; Thiago Telès as Tiresia II; Célia Catalifo as Anna; Lou Castel as Charles; Alex Descas as Marignac; Fred Ulysse as Roberto

Who is Bernard Bonello? Among the troupe of directors, not of a specific country but with a tendency to be usually non-English cinema filmmakers, who are not the most well known but are able to sustain long careers with few gaps in their film productions. Directors with all their films, even the flawed ones, being inherently of interest as they explore new genres for themselves or interesting directions, helped by the fact they will appear in film festivals and have physical media releases. They are a group I've become obsessed with having come to cinema in the late 2000s, when the likes of Artificial Eye and Tartan Films (who released Tiresia on DVD) were picking up world cinema and with a tendency to pick a lot of films clearly meant to appeal outside of drama cinema as much as snap up work with buzz around them.

Bonello has never really transitioned into very mainstream work, his highest profile in terms of this being his 2014 biopic of Yves Saint Laurent, his theatrical and short film work wildly varying beyond this. Whilst it could be at a cost of an auteurist voice and a risk of bad creative choices, all his films would intrigue an open mind. Between The Pornographer (2001), managing to cast French acting legend Jean-Pierre Léaud against explicit real sex, to Zombi Girl (2019), tackling the cultural perceptions of Haitian voodoo and white colonialism of Haiti, no one could argue Bonello is safe in his choices. Tiresia, which explicitly relates to the Greek legend of Tiresias, is Bonello possibly biting too close to Bruno Dumont, a man who arguably was part of this trend until (even with his comedies) he confirmed himself as a major auteur. Dumont's style was quiet, minimalist cinema which spoke frankly and at times with transgression, contemplating themes of religion and human existence from a very open minded atheist, one who eventually to everyone's bafflement move to full blown comedy, mini-series and a two part story of the Joan of Arc where the first film was scored to breakcore/metal oddball Igorrr¹. This is fully in that early era of Dumont's work in terms of inspiration.

Tiresia isn't as good as Dumont at his best, but it finds itself strangely relevant a decade later as transgender politics is a growing conversation, the movie surprisingly high minded on the subject rather than embarrassing considering the era it comes from. Tiresia begins with a man (Laurent Lucas) with an unhealthy view of female beauty, who kidnaps a female sex worker named Tiresia (Clara Choveaux). Tiresia is kept in a room for him to obsess over, only with it becoming apparent that she is a transgender woman, pre-operation, who when her hormone injections are not available leads to the film casting Thiago Telès as her alternative self. This double casting would probably not be done nowadays, but Tiresia is a fascinating film in hindsight which does more beyond this. The man himself does have a complex view of her when this is revealed, one which does reinterpret the Greek myth when Tiresia is blinded by ways of scissors here, but also is a film of two halves which takes a route with more nuisance for these two characters afterwards.

The man becomes more complicated when Tiresia does, in the sense whilst he is portrayed as a villain, when he blinds her with scissors and dumps her in a ditch, the tale itself is told in two halves and eventually returns to a cerebral confrontation between them. One that is beyond revenge to a spiritual place, especially as Tiresia, who is completely sympathetic, becomes prophetic and able to see the future as the mythological version did. Cared for by a young woman and in a position where the gift of prophecy is seen as a curse, followers eventually appear and the man is revealed to be a priest, one who will have to investigate this apparent miracle.

This is where Bruno Dumont stands out more - an atheist who is yet obsessed with Christianity and mysticism, he is also much more even-handed in having unsympathetic and problematic protagonists who are yet fascinating to follow because he has the extremeness of his minimalist style. His mix of this with magic realism even in his earliest work, like his obsession with levitation cast members off the ground, also had profoundness even when he had it later in a comedy for a joke. Where Bonello succeeds himself, whilst Tiresia falters in its tone and execution at times, is the contemplation of its unique premise.

A reoccurring vision of Tiresia, as played by Clara Choveaux, on a bed with a man and a woman in the midst of coitus, far from a crass undercutting of the character's transgenderism, has a remarkable sensuality as well as symbolises her position, evolving into a much more complicated character as we move along and find out moments such as her coming from Brazil as flashbacks show. The eventual return of the man, forcing him into reflection on his transgression, is a hell of a lot more progressive in hindsight than if the film just punished him. Really where the film had to improve, left as a minor film of immense worth, is that the actual end does dissipate like vapour without impact. The young woman who finds Tiresia isn't given as much time to be fleshed out as one would hope, and the two act structure does lean more to the first act than fully embracing the Greek legend of inspiration which fully comes forth in the second half. More so as it brings in a character becoming pregnant, becoming a Virgin Mary even if not a virginal birth with a Messiah as a child; Dumont would have made that aspect much more detailed and meaningful than this is, rather than something abrupt.

Aesthetically, it's a slow burn. Stripped down in aesthetic to the point it does have a tangible style of mood that helps considerably. Dumont would have used more non-actors, whilst here there are many figures that are prolific in European cinema, everyone nonetheless succeeding. There is also so much here that stands out, so that ultimately Tiresia the film is also still compelling. The passing scenes in woodland where sex workers parade in elaborate costumes, but act like bored employees, have an odd matter-of-factness that is refreshing; on the opposite spectrum, the aforementioned images of the threesome, and all the loaded nature of that symbolism also stands out. An odd decision to have a French equivalent of a hedgehog, with bigger ears, as a reoccurring image, in the back garden of the man's house where he keeps Tiresia locked up, is an oddly amusing touch until it ends in tragedy. An odd way to end the review, but these types of director are far more interesting when curious touches like this appear, fascinating me for their virtues and that even these touches, among their main ideas, stand out. Throughout his career, just reading the synopsis of all of Bernard Bonello's films, even the short length work, offer a cavalcade of fascinating subject matter, and it helps as well even with a flawed work like Tiresia that even odd creative decisions like that one I'm closing one is something to admire. That's a good sign for any artistic figure as it means you will pay attention to the bigger meanings more too.

Abstract Spectrum: Minimalist

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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1) Oh, I wish Dumont's later films were actually more readily available in the United Kingdom. Somehow, and this has happened to Bonello too a couple of times, the UK has been starved of titles that have had good releases in the United States for inexplicable reasons.

Epidemic (1987)

Director: Lars von Trier

Screenplay: Lars von Trier and Niels Vørsel

Cast: Lars von Trier, Niels Vørsel, Allan De Waal, Ole Ernst, Michael Gelting, Colin Gilder, Svend Ali Hamann, Claes Kastholm Hansen, Udo Kier

After his debut The Element of Crime (1984), Lars von Trier made a film in Epidemic that's a drastic shift in production. Far from a glib result, Epidemic is an important work even though it's held as a minor creation - it didn't even get a UK premiere on home media until Tartan Video released the whole E Trilogy (alongside Europa (1991)) in the 2000s. It is a moment where Lars von Trier first embraced his obsession with self set restrictions, upon himself and even filmmaker Jorgen Leth in The Five Obstructions (2003). The restriction is in budget, rawer in appearance and as a meta film starring Lars von Trier and co-writer Niels Vørsel as themselves, and proved he could leap into new genres and ballparks very quickly into his career.

Interestingly, if The Element of Crime was subconsciously a post-apocalypse film, in a future Europe where everything's collapsed and struggling along in the aftermath in the midst of a detective story, than Epidemic is a prologue to one. Von Trier and Vørsel, when their original script is lost due to the issues one always has with new technology and need to still provide a story to sell to a producer, hastily begin researching a tale about a disease epidemic which leaves humankind obliterated, with recreations of their script staring von Trier himself as a noble doctor who however is an unwitting Typhoid Mary, taking the disease with him when he leaves the quarantined remaining city into the wasteland. A narrator also explicitly states that, far from a comedic and mainly improvised drama, this is all a prelude before an actual epidemic wipes everything in civilised society away.

The film drastically changes in aesthetic away from The Element of Crime, von Trier's debut indebted to his love of Andrei Tarkovsky. The production is far less precise - abrupt editing cuts, a heavier grain to the images, monochrome and with a bit of stolen footage of environments, especially when there's a brief jaunt to Germany. Whether it's largely improvised or not I cannot fully tell, but Epidemic does feel well thought out baring the Germany segment which feels like a separate section in itself. Much of the film becomes a documentary on the life of filmmakers if fictionalised, going about trying to organise and research their subject in such a short space of time. One segment I cannot help but wonder about mind, and whether he was okay to have it in, is the small cameo of actor Udo Kier as himself in the Germany segment. His segment, where he describes a memory passed on by his dying mother about his birth and his subsequent break into tears, is uncomfortable in whether it should be in Epidemic, as it stands out considerably in tone, but is nonetheless a moment that startles.

The fictional scenes in vast contrast are significantly more stylised, a sense even on this lower budget the director can compose very eye catching scenes, taking locations as they are and using them to his advantage. He doesn't hide the artificial either and uses it to affect, a scene of a person in a coffin from the side, underground probably one of the most striking and evocative of the whole film. These scenes do however have the one sour point of Epidemic - a really crass piece of dialogue for a black character, an interesting figure who (with the actor initially introduced as a taxi driver in one scene in the real world) is in the apocalyptic world foisted into becoming a Catholic priest with only a few days training and unable to read Latin, in his death throes due to the epidemic speaking the really cringe worthy piece in question. It's sadly the sign of one of Lars von Trier's greatest vices appearing this early in his career, really misguided attempts at provocative which can lead sometimes to convoluted defences of free speech, where his least rewarding work appears from, and how he kept sticking his foot in his mouth especially at Q&As decades from this film.

You could also argue the eighties pop song at the end credits with heavy handed lyrics co written by von Trier is also a sour note, but it comes off as strangely endearing in a curious film. Epidemic is, despite its few flaws, actually a really unique gem which defies genres in its structure. Part of it is a lo-fi drama; some of it is a post-apocalyptic film in a minimalist style. Aspects like Udo Kier's scenes blur fiction and reality, and I haven't even mentioned the film's title is permanently etched on the top left corner of shots like a watermark, a curious creative choice some might find distracting but has a personality to it as a creative decision. The film, if it has a theme, is the power of creativity as ultimately the fake epidemic becomes real. Whilst over-the-top, the finale involves a woman brought into a hypnotic state to see the world of Epidemic with her own eyes, turning the film into a horror film as a result which gets hysterical in tone and certainly ends the story in a memorable way at a dinner party.

In terms of idiosyncratic filmmaking, it is an achievement in how unconventional it is. Lars von Trier, for his flaws, has thankfully never had a film which he made just for money or is truly dreadful, even a lesser known work like The Boss of It All (2006), a comedy, being a lo-fi production where the camera was programmed to hot how it liked in a form of controlled visual indeterminacy. Epidemic, from the challenge of its own low budget, became a story of two creators (played by the actual figures) trying to hastily create a work. A question to how accurate it is to themselves is to debate - I hope so for Niels Vørsel its exaggerated for this version as, whilst it has a sick humour to it, the tangent where he posed as a teen pen writer to American teen girls, whilst never played for sexual connotations but Vørsel having to play a teen in his thirties, has aged in a way where such scenes might not be funny to many anymore.

But, hey, if there ever was a director who was a critic of himself before there was a line for his detractors, it's Lars von Trier. There's a sense, credible, when Epidemic does become a horror film that its narrative is how these two men, von Trier and Vørsel, are complacent to the horrifying power of their craft. Its telling, probably in the most poignant scene in the film that even though he eventually accepts the offer, when von Trier has the chance to see an autopsy at a hospital for "research", he looks on at a male human body without excitement. Not distressed, but distant. Blurring genres, the film's narrator warned us the world here would end in an epidemic. Befittingly von Trier made his self referential film about film making one where that means little when a super disease takes central stage, growing boils and all, naturally becoming a greater concern that a movie deal with a Danish film producer.

Abstract Spectrum: Lo-Fi/Meta

Abstract Spectrum (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Nocturne (1980)

From https://a.ltrbxd.com/resized/film-poster/8/7/8/7
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Director: Lars von Trier

Screenplay: Tom Elling and Lars von Trier

Cast: Yvette as The Woman; Solbjørg Højfeldt as The Telephone Voice

A little review, for a ten minute student project of the notorious Danish director I do love even if von Trier can be his own worst enemy. Most people reading this, if not all, will know Lars von Trier and at least a film of his, even one of his infamous non-cinematic events especially at Cannes Film Festivals. Nocturne, if the audio commentary from von Trier and Nocturne's editor Tomas Gislason for Tartan Video is right¹, was where "von" even comes from, not his actual name but apparently added when asked by those as the film school to obscure his name.

Nocturne is a curious and imaginative experiment, non-narrative based but you can create a semblance of a plot. Of a woman who now lives at night and as a result finds the sunlight painful, going to fly on an airplane in an act with someone else's involvement that might change her life. The opening, where a masked man leaps through a glass window at her, an ambitious moment executed perfectly, suggests a trauma which has left her psychologically scared, and as we see her nocturnal apartment, she lives in an isolated and claustrophobic place. Her weakened and nervous mood, played by "Yvette", suggests a shell-shocked and emotionally damaged woman.

In knowledge of its roots, it's a credible sight of von Trier's ambitions, creating atmosphere heavily indebted to the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky. Von Trier also wanted to make Nocturne with the idea of extreme symmetry with lines in the images onscreen drawing the viewer's eyes. The slates of windows, straight lines of the bed and objects on furniture, an extreme symmetry even where the actress had to contort herself to his request to follow the layout of the world around her, a clear picture of that even when he co-created the Dogma 95 movement to remove his artifice, von Trier has always been obsessed with rules and constructing his films' forms as much as the content. This short not surprisingly fits the world that his E Trilogy had - Elements of a Crime (1985) and Europa (1991) rather than Epidemic (1987) - of incredible, precise artistic production which came after this short film.

It's as a result felt like an actual nocturnal dream, a haze of recollection arguably helped by the stuttering of the images as, whilst preserved, a cleaned up negative of the film never existed, only one where lines occasionally appear on the images or they themselves stutter as pictures rather than moving sequences. The flaws of the production as much as the deliberate ones, be it matching a watch being matched to a church dome to a superimposed background image of birds behind the actress, all creation a lucid potent creation.

And undeniably, early on in his career Lars von Trier shows he is a great director even though he can dig himself into holes in the content he has in his later years. He takes risks, always has admirably but I am aware with the likes of Nymphomaniac (2013) (the split two halves, not the five hour plus director's cut) that he's taken to shock value and unintentional silly ideas in the desire to prod human behaviour, a factor that whilst he's capable of incredible dramas and genre films is something that could always undermine him. Its why explicitly a work like The Kingdom series (1994-7) is one of his best productions, needing to be remembered as his intelligence is match by more emphasis on his incredible style then stumbling into poor arguments. And the thing is, despite his notoriety he can be self critical and humble, so he might not be that offended by this review if he ever learnt of it; he'd probably have a few more things about this short that anyone would've like to heard about.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Psychodrama

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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1) Nocturne was an Easter Egg for Tartan Video's release of the E Trilogy, one of two I only learnt of in 2019 and is something I'm blessed to have learnt as, alongside Images of Liberation (1982), they're additional films and worthwhile discoveries.

V/H/S (2012)

From https://pics.filmaffinity.com/V_H_S_
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Directors: Various

Screenplay: Various

Cast: Various

If we look back at the 2010s, we always should bear in mind the last decade's culture washes over the next at first until the midway, where the new era's trends and aesthetics have definitely taken over. The late 2000s gave us the increasing flux of mumblecore cinema, a lo-fi independent movement of American cinema about small dramas, which mutated into "mumblegore" where that aesthetic met horror cinema. Another poignant aspect of this moment is how the circle could encompass figures from genre cinema and mumblecore, such as Adam Wingard being an actor in a Joe Swanberg film. By 2010, films like Ti West's The House of the Devil (2009) were immensely popular or talked about from this movement.  It's not the only movement from the 2000s in the horror genre, but a prominent one.

By 2020, the 2010s changed a bit considerably. A horror film we talk of from the 2010s, probably the most talked of, is Get Out (2017), a film by an African American director about African American characters which tap into modern concerns. Social concerns creep back in considerably.  "Elevated horror", a subjective term for people to use for films they like who don't like horror, exists which doesn't help a really fascinating crop of art house influence, ambitious work. Unfortunately, in these ten years that initial wave of lo-fi creators from the 2000s I mentioned practically dwindle, or move on to higher budgeted work, or vanished. Ti West practically vanished after 2013, and Wingard helmed a Netflix adaptation of a famous manga (Death Note (2017)).

From https://horrorfreaknews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/v-h-s-10.jpg

It's a potentially contrived couple of paragraphs up there, probably lacking a proper historically accurate assessment, and not to dismiss that Ti West eventually went into television work, but returning to V/H/S it feels like an ominous warning that the initial high wave for that late 2000s movement was going to capsize. The horror anthology, crossed with the found footage subgenre, was challenged for its obsession with white hetero male characters, a lot of stories surrounding dangerous female characters, a lot of female nudity, and questions to whether it was actually good with its curious crossing of the growing obsession with VHS tapes and the small boom of anthology horror films in the 2010s. It's already a time capsule at the end of the decade in the horror genre.

One of V/H/S's biggest issues is the wraparound by Adam Wingard, Tape 56, isn't good. Many won't be on board the story as it follows an incredibly loathsome group of young men, creators of shock tapes who at one point accost a woman and expose her bared breasts to camera against her will, so the segment's already at a disadvantage unless you are comfortable with stories following awful people. I don't mind, belonging in the later camp, here a potential cynical comeuppance suggested as their greed to acquire a videotape at a man's house will do then all in, but the segment (interspersed between others) is barely sketched out and abruptly ends. It's not even that I just wanted to punish loathsome bros either, as for myself horror is much more interesting when its either complex or dark morality fables of the worst in human beings to look at like a mirror, a story of potential interest as bastards whose line of work pulls them into a doomed situation they could've avoided if they thought honourably for once.

It's strange considering, out of the set of directors, Adam Wingard (with screenwriter Simon Barrett), the most successful of all those involved, fell the hardest in making that segment, even in mind they were in the midst of making You're Next (2011) around the same time. David Bruckner, co-director of one of the segments of The Signal (2007), who hasn't made much at all, does better whilst still tackling obnoxious bros finding their comeuppance, these ones acquiring cheap camera spectacles to record sex with a drunken female bar patron or two, individuals most wouldn't have sympathy with either. Amateur Night works entirely because of actress Hannah Fierman, playing a strange female figure that tags along and is revealed to not be human; distinct, with giant brown eyes, she steals the entire anthology in terms of a performance, and tragically didn't do much beyond this film that is known. Even under later prosthetics, she has a mix of the animalistic and strange sympathy in her acting, when everything turns south for everyone else, that I have to applaud her. Obviously as well, in an anthology film with a lot of nudity, it would've been a brave performance for her and her stand-in anyway to have to act in a potentially exposing role completely naked and covered in fake blood.

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After this we get the curious history of Ti West, whose Second Honeymoon is a slow and dialogue heavy psychodrama of a couple (including anthology segment director Joe Swanberg) effectively in a mumblecore minimalist thriller which is an acquired taste, out in rural Americana and being possibly stalked by a third figure. The kind of segment whose abrupt synchronicity, where a fortune telling machine they improvised around managed to provide them with a fortune directly connected to their plot, is worked with. The issue is that, unlike some mumblecore films I've seen, it's sluggish with little reward and too short for characterisation. Ti West' career has been a rollercoaster with a drop at the end, the emperor of horror off the popularity and acclaim The House of the Devil got but into the 2010s meeting diminishing returns critically. Around this time his segment for the first ABCs of Death (2012), an anthology series I really adore, notoriously was criticised for being lazily put together and tasteless as it had a miscarriage as the twist, even in a first film where a ridiculous amount of toilet based segments and indulgences made put off people beforehand. When I mentioned earlier he disappeared, I am referring to the last film of his which got some advertising, The Sacrament (2013), whilst I have heard none of the films he made afterwards into the current day.

Glenn McQuaid, who made I Sell the Dead (2008) but has also had difficulty making more films, decided to make pastiche of a slasher film, one where the medium itself is prodded with. Subjectively, the original V/H/S is the only one of the three films that follows the actual premise, reflected the growing interest in VHS tapes as those old enough to have grown up with them in the United Stated became nostalgic for the medium - that all these segments are videotapes in the wraparound collected by an unknown source. Even then, whilst the most faithful to the original idea, the original film of the trilogy doesn't really push the concept at all, the exception really Tuesday the 17th which makes an interesting stab with a phantasmagoric and invisible killer who is only noticed the camera as a glitch. It still plays like a slasher, but reduced to a short, it does overcome an issue I have had with the sub genre that I always turned off whenever they got to the prolonged stalk and slash scenes, and the chase scenes, even though they are the main selling points of slasher films. Here there's also a creepier edge as this killer is a literal phantom, something which defies logic as inevitability as Jason Voorhees was at Camp Crystal Lake.

Following this, Joe Swanberg steps behind the camera and keeps the bar high with The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger. Swanberg was the odd one out from the directors involved, an innovator of the mumblecore movement alongside Andrew Bujalski and others who didn't make horror films at this point. This proves a virtue as whilst trying to include the short in the anthology is awkward, a Skype call recorded onto a videotape, it's a perfect take on a short horror tale. A creepy one at that, a disturbing one of minimalism and manipulation I won't spoil, baring that set around a series of Skype calls between a young woman and her boyfriend, it brings in science fiction and is entirely about the fear of control. It also feels like a cap on the trend throughout of men trying to have control of woman which is a sub current throughout, in which this is the ultimate condemnation. Even the use of nudity becomes uncomfortable in this case and voyeuristic on purpose.

From https://www.filmofilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/v-h-s-15.jpg

Ending the anthology is Radio Silence's 10/31/98, which I have softened to even though it's still more of a technical exercise out of the anthology, playing to the videotape aesthetic by being set at that time and yet involving some obvious CGI for when hell breaks loose. In this case, a group of bros break the trend of how they've been acting so far to try to help someone when they accidentally stumble into an exorcism. You could argue the twist undercuts this and is crass, but I can see why the production decided to end on this rather than the wraparound, as if has the most high impact effect. Being a traditionalist, you should end on a wraparound unless it's really good, but it was the wiser decision considering the blank squib the framing story turned out to be.

Radio Silence itself fragmented. Of interest is how two members, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, collaborated on Ready or Not, a 21st Century Fox release which, even if it got an 18 certificate in the UK, got a good wide release at multiplex in 2019. That's a nice epilogue, returning to this review's prologue, that there are figures from this that did continue on and even jump up the ladder in scale of their work. It's a reminder that the early 2010s anthology boom was a huge virtue in terms of letting talent grow and veterans re-sharpen their teeth, a horror subgenre that deserves to be a constantly funded source as it was back at this point.

The original V/H/S is the weakest of the trilogy, which is controversial to say because I'm arguing V/H/S: Viral (2014), the last and least regarded, is actually better. V/H/S 2 (2013) is arguably the biggest hitter, though controversially I feel that the segment that caught everyone's attention, Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans' Safe Haven, had that effect just for how insane and bloody it was. (The real treat for myself, and the one found footage film which got over the logic issue of why a camera would be left on recording in these incidents, was the one where a cyclist with a head mounted camera ended up in a zombie apocalypse, befittingly helmed by Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale, one half of the directors and the producer of The Blair Witch Project (1999) who inspired these found footage films in the first place.) After Viral, this franchise alongside The ABCs of Death subsided and ended, this particular franchise burning the candle at both ends considering how these films were released over only three years. It's a shame as I'd rather have horror franchises like this continue on, letting new talent and veterans work, than a terrible string of sequels and straight-to-video (digital?) work based on a good film that shouldn't have stretched further on. Returning to the original V/H/S, I've softened to it and find fascination in its grimy VHS fuzz tone even if it's really a marker of how all the influences in the film were going to disappear eventually, just from how divisive it was when reviewed. I'm glad the tone drastically changed, just one film like this enough to suffice.

Abstract Spectrum: Lurid

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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Liberté sexuelle (2012)

Director: Ovidie

Screenplay: Ovidie

Cast: Liza Del Sierra as Olga; Sharon Lee as Suzy; Francesco Malcom as Jean; Phil Holliday as Garcin; Titof as Yves; Angell Summers as Estelle

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Another review of a pornographic film, and again questions has to be asked. Can I review this? Is it justifiable to? Can my words offer any insight? Can the material be of interest for a review? And of course, can anything be taken away that isn't just about the sex?

It might be absurd to even worry of these things, but it's a personal anxiety that these reviews might put off readers. This particular case however offers interesting context as we're dealing with a film directed by a female filmmaker named Ovidie, someone I have actually encountered as she has a role in Bertrand Bonello's The Pornographer (2001), a film from when she was still an adult porn performer and was in a scene excised in detail for sexual explicitness by the British Board of Film Classification. Hers is a fascinating history - a philosophy student and feminist whose once condemned pornography only, upon researching the material and learning of the female porn stars' lives, had a drastic change of mine to the material and started acting in these films herself. In that time onwards, she has worked in a Lars von Trier produced work (All About Anna (2005), starred in one of the last films of one of my favourite directors, Jean Rollin's sadly difficult to find La nuit des horloges (2007), moved away from porn acting to directing them, and into documentaries too, including Pornocracy (2017) which is her views of the ethical issues surrounding companies who run "free" websites like YouPorn and the sexuality of Millennials.

I am still fascinated by this figure, and wish to actually track down more of her work out of legitimate interest, especially as she has written on the subject of sexuality as much. It's a bit with a heavy heart that Liberté sexuelle is just conventional, all in spite of it toying with a potentially interesting subject in mainstream or hardcore material of polygamy, in which a cynical reporter for a TV series (played by Ovidie herself) visits a commune who is open to free sex with each other. Polygamy is a complicated subject and the film tries to tackle it on the surface. That the head male who owns the house does reference how apes are polygamist is raised. How there's a sequence of them all going in a mini-bus to have medical tests for STDs is seen. How there's an openness, whilst technically in couples, to them without jealously, despite Ovidie's character constantly trying to stir the pot, is there. The biggest plot point is to do with one of the female members becoming pregnant , a major issue as in real life as, when monogamy is socially viewed as the ideal and is legally enforced, it is entirely possible for children to be taken away from parents who are openly polygamous as these characters are.

In light of this, Ovidie's character becomes the villain, an antagonist whose own romantic strife, disconnected to her work and in a program that is manipulative to induce cracks to appear for the likes of a mail order bride, is matched by her prodding at why no one in this commune ever felt jealous of their other halves kissing someone else let alone having sex with them. Yes, from a background of monogamy being a cultural institution being found even in the modern day, even in secular lifestyles, her questions can be the issues of the viewers', an attempt at a dialogue which is part of provoking questions on this issue. In fact it would've been much more rewarding, even in lieu to the fact this is pornography first, if it had gone a little further with this narrative.

The film doesn't really get any further from opening the conversation instead, and this is where the discrepancy between porn's purpose to titillate (to be frank, to masturbate to or to bring a couple watching this to recreate the mood) and art, posing an issue. I'll argue you can have titillation and art - issues like gender politics and objectification are among some of the biggest issues with pornography, but with the form itself a greater awareness of this can be rectified, something which gains greater weight knowing the filmmaker was once an anti-porn feminist before she had a drastic revaluation of the medium through her thoughts on the liberating properties of female eroticism. Artistic quality is an entirely different kettle of fish though, which softcore cinema has been able to negotiate with greater ease because they didn't need to grind the pace down with actual sex. The film to its credit tries to work around this - the sex scenes are short, and there's attempts to bring them out into more playful ways, such as a girlfriend of a man having sex with another commune member merely saying hi and passing out the room, or when Liza Del Sierra as Olga borrows a spare camera from the TV crew and spends a night having a lot of sex in a playful romp.

From https://s6.dpic.me/02214/83ov07ux2cd0.jpg

Actually, let's stay with Liza Del Sierra as, whilst everyone else to be honest is just okay, Del Sierra stands out beyond being a visibly dynamic and comfortable porn performer, someone you could see in another type of mainstream cinema as she's a wonderful bundle of heightened energy throughout every scene, the most stable rock in terms of character as the matriarch. I like how, whilst there is some drama, this never comes off as scuzzy or fixated on more "edgier" material in porn either, Ovidie in interviews someone who has expressed concern, even as a pro-sex advocate and former performer, to how BDSM ideas like humiliation, spanking and holding an actress' throat mid-coitus have been brought into mainstream porn where adolescents in particular, who'll see it regardless of any attempts of restriction, may be influenced by it. Here there's little in terms of fetishes at all, even the commune whilst the female characters have bisexual relationships with no male-male sex. The exceptions if any are "paizuri", to which I am going to deliberately leave you the reader to investigate baring the fact the term of Japanese erotic slang sounds so much more stylish than the crude English term, and Del Sierra being very resourceful with her feet. If we're going to have to discuss the mechanics of the film, whether it's actually titillating, that's entirely subjective and in itself pointless thing to try to write about as it'll just be descriptions that will not be as worthwhile as just finding the film for yourself.  

You could argue, in honestly, that Ovidie's film comes off as quaint in this era though, which is a surprise in knowledge she is meant to be a controversial figure, something considered "vanilla" nowadays that might've been transgressive in another time. This is from a view of someone, whilst knowing these terms and history, who openly admits to a real lack of knowledge of this medium just in terms of how pornography has always been a lot more difficult to see in the United Kingdom, making anyone who actually wants to study the material rather than use it for its initial purpose significantly more difficult, especially as you're more likely to find compilations of scenes nowadays online or in stores than actual films in this decade. If IMDB is right, this was a TV movie, which if ever proven to be true does express how France (and Europe in general) has always had a more relaxed view on sex, in vast contrast to their greater concerns with violence, to the British and the Americans. I cannot make comments for the Americans, but it's always been embarrassing being English knowing we gave the world the likes of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the art of Aubrey Beardsley, but our authorities have always come off in puritans in vast contrast even to our Carry On sex comedies.

The film itself, back on track, has a matter of fact digital look, bright and full of detail befitting a known Blu-Ray release, which however leaves another paradox. On one hand it's bare in terms of aesthetic, excusing the pun, but fits a film attempting at realism in how it's a film crew filming the everyday life of the commune, even to the point the director's fraught phone conversations with her husband are learnt by the viewer because she accidentally leaves her microphone on after filming. Honestly, the bigger issues are more to the fact the film, even if it's still meant to be porn first, doesn't take a higher risk with its drama or subject. If you're here for the sex like most would be, it's subjective (as already mentioned) what you as an individual viewer are turned on by, but the initial banality is compelling as cinema, especially as there is no censorship when it comes to the sex.

There is bravery to these actors and actresses they can hold even over mainstream performers in that they will have actual sex on camera, the line only crossed with the likes of Shortbus (2006) and a few other films in art cinema history, one of the most basic aspects of human existence in sex something we've had to figure out ways to depict and have also found uncomfortable, for a lack of a better term, to film as it is. There's a banal playfulness to appreciate in this film as well also, just in, to be blunt, a blowjob abruptly beginning in a grassy French field between two friends wearing autumn coats and woolly hats, something in how sexual desire is every day and not a contrived series of cinematic circumstances. The film even takes a risk, when porn is usually meant to build in escalation, in that Chekov's orgy takes place halfway through as a result of a game of Twister, a risk which is the one attempt at more drama I have to admire on a storytelling level as from there is when, halfway through, cracks eventually appear in their group and the pregnancy storyline eventually appears.

The film sadly doesn't have a good enough final act to match this. The ethical and emotional questions of polygamy aren't fully invested into, and Ovidie's character is ultimately a stereotype of a cynical person who resolves to find herself and ditch her work, which you can find a dime a dozen in mainstream cinema. It even ends on a tangent - a rich older man and his much younger bride who has sex with a stud boyfriend for him - rather than anything climatic to forgive the puns again. Yes, this is a review of a porn film, but probably one of the ways we can finally stop the ostracization of our sexuality as a species is to take these films seriously, pluck one out of nowhere as I have, regardless of who I am as a viewer in terms of my own sexuality, and just take a subjective view.

You can have your cake and eat it with this genre if you could pull it off, again with inappropriately sexual choices of wording, with being sexy but also having some mental stimulus, but I was disheartened after the build up of this feminist female porn filmmaker, whilst expecting something more optimistic than Catherine Breillat, that I got something ordinary. That's my fault, presuming something more subversive, bringing my own expectations to the table; aside from this, mind, I'd actually be happy if work was more like this, with a knowledge that as more women are producing and filming porn, hopefully more feature films exist from them and, maybe if more socially acceptable in Britain, it could provide a needed change for the better in our views.

Suspiria (2018)

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjQ2MTIy
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Director: Luca Guadagnino

Screenplay: David Kajganich

Based on Suspiria by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi

Cast: Dakota Johnson as Susanna "Susie" Bannion; Tilda Swinton as Madame Blanc, Lutz Ebersdorf as Dr. Josef Klemperer, Mia Goth as Sara Simms, Angela Winkler as Miss Tanner, Ingrid Caven as Miss Vendegast, Elena Fokina as Olga Ivanova, Sylvie Testud as Miss Griffith, Renée Soutendijk as Miss Huller, Christine LeBoutte as Miss Balfour, Małgosia Bela as Mrs. Bannion, Fabrizia Sacchi as Pavla, Jessica Harper as Anke Meier

Suspiria has been the subject of many planned remakes for a long time. Dario Argento captured lightning in a bottle, when taking a story from his then-wife Daria Nicolodi and, combined with Technicolor and fairy tale logic, created a true one-off in horror cinema. Even before we get to the remake that came to be, he'd follow it up with Inferno (1980), the film I've held as my personal favourite from the "Three Mothers" trilogy, and the unfortunate Mother of Tears (2007), which wasn't exactly the finale we hoped for. I'd be remised not to mention the unofficial third film, Luigi Cozzi's The Black Cat (1989), a lost work (as in trying to locate a pristine version) which cashed in on the films by making a film in the same lore, which befittingly was a cash-in made by the Italians themselves before anyone else could do.

The remake concept circled around David Gordon Green, an American director who began as a critical darling with dramas like George Washington (2000) before his curious journey into genre cinema from the late 2000s on; he'd never make his version, but did effectively remake Halloween H20 (1998) as Halloween (2018), trying to be the proper sequel to John Carpenter's 1978 film. There was talk of a Japanese animated version of Suspiria¹, which is befitting knowing Suspiria was insanely popular in the country; the choice of studio, Gonzo, might've been a bad choice as, whilst known for a lot of Western co-productions and glitz, the company who started properly in the medium in 2000s were notorious for work which dropped in quality halfway through, a CV barring some gems and loved shows full of critical failures, and would eventually leave the 2000s so economically crippled they're a shell of their former selves.

The person who finally got a Suspiria remake done was befittingly also Italian, another curious choice as it was filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, who made his announcement of this plan at the 2015 Venice Film Festival. He beforehand was hailed for a string of world cinema dramas, including collaboration with muse Tilda Swinton, which doesn't scream out horror cinema in the slightest. It's the same as when Werner Herzog remake Nosferatu (1922) in the 1979 version, the German director not known for genre films wishing however to remake what he held as a masterpiece of his nation, not however without taking a hugely different tone though it followed the same narrative. Suspiria 2018 has the template, but is a very different animal.

Six acts (plus an epilogue), shot by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's cinematographer until Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, which means a man behind some of my favourite films is on staff, as if Thom Yorke of Radiohead, who was imposed with the impossible challenge of topping Goblin's one-of-a-kind score for the original. Guadagnino also decides to flesh out the premise. No longer has hyper-coloured, but a lush muted series of browns, blacked surfaces and natural reds make up this new world, and still set in Berlin. This version openly decides to reference the political turmoil of the era, set around the time that the Baader-Meinhof group, an extreme left wing group who terrorised West Germany in the seventies with bombings and crimes, eventually collapsed. Tapping into a moment when for this group, who were like rock stars in appearance, violently dissolved, in an era of extreme political chaos in countries like Italy and Japan around the world, this Suspiria in its two and a half hours is filtered through the tone of the real world of nothing being grounded and prone to destruction, even the witches coven of the original Suspiria now imagined as an actual community, seen even voting for their leaders, that can still collapse.

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Probably the oddest aspect though is that Guadagnino, in love with the original film, eventually embraces the lurid Italian schlock of gore to a surprise. He adds a greater weight of severity before this. The ballet school that is secretly a witches' coven is seen from their perspective from the get-go, with meetings and leadership votes, one which is had to survive the likes of World War II and Nazi rule as a matriarchal group but with the issues as a clan whose methods to keep themselves safe include murder will eventually be their downfall. Tilda Swinton, who has been with the director since his first film The Protagonists (1999), is the figure of Madame Blanc, whose work explicitly pulls from avant-garde dance history as a character who, when not being a witch, is trying to innovate new work in the medium. The 1977 Suspiria really didn't have any dancing to speak of, merely a setting to set-up the actual plot, but the 2018 film makes up for this and even manages to have a death by it, probably the most gruesome of them all with a relish Argento would love, wherein a figure is contorted from afar beyond recognition. That scene, the first of these in a very bloody film, is also a reminder that whilst Guadagnino is taking this very serious, he eventually is willing to step out of his usual type of cinema into the over-the-top luridness of his fellow countrymen.

He doesn't pull punches, bless him, and this is where the 2018 Suspiria really won even a person like me, suspicious of this entire premise before seeing the film, because Guadagnino as an outsider to horror in his career doesn't play safe and can bring an entirely different perspective that offers fresh territory. He goes for the gore and grotesquery, the weird nightmare sequences and even a nude demonic dance ritual in the ending, all whilst fleshing out a world of his own from the initial premise. That the witches have a power struggle, bitterness felt with the fact that despite their goals as much being a feminist one, who survived through the Nazi patriarchy, they're devolving into violence and arguing that is as more likely to rid them of students as it is going to harm them. And Susie Bannion this time, our American protagonist now played by Dakota Johnson, is a curious figure with a deeply religious background she fled from, almost turn of the century when we cut to her mother's death bed through the film as it's an Amish background, one less like Jessica Harper's curious fairy tale figure of the first film but a more focused, determined one.

[Major Spoiler Warnings]

Since we're not holding back on spoilers, she's actually the real Mother of Sighs, Guadagnino still retaining the mythology Argento built up of the "Three Mothers", three great witches of terror and fear inspired from Thomas de Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis, turning this film into a kind of twist that I'd find in one of the Italian films of movies from a Luigi Cozzi or Umberto Lenzi, with added mass implosion of heads for good measure. It's a pinch of salt whether each viewer will like this, alongside all the other details throughout, but I have softened to it as it comes from a director whose love for the original film clearly spurred him to want to do something very different, and decided to my glee to embrace the kind of lurid pulp of directors I have mentioned, far from dismissing, I have always loved even though they can be ridiculous. He also finds a way for Jessica Harper herself to make a cameo which brought the hairs up on the back of my neck, a real of sign of tribute and actually beautiful in that it's for plot importance to.

[Major Spoilers End]

In one of his other curious choices, whilst it would've been nice to have Udo Kier return to have an abrupt exposition scene, we have Tilda Swinton in two roles, between Blanc and also an elderly male psychologist Dr. Josef Klemperer, whose investment in the ballet school's underbelly stems from the loss of his wife in their youth during WWII. Suspiria 2018 is long enough this character has his own back-story and conclusion, a journey where he'll eventually learn the truth of her, which is actually a sad scene even if tonally it might seem odd as an epilogue after the gory madness that transpires, something that strangely is reminiscent of Brian Yuzna's Faust: Love of the Damned (2000) but significantly better produced. You can tell its Swinton under heavy makeup effects in her voice, even if the prospthetic effects team behind the disguise deserve an honorary award in achievement; when the choice was made I don't know, buts its definitely a fascinating choice to a film that is rife in idiosyncratic choices, and Swinton is good in both roles. I mentioned "muse" before, as she has been in a few of his films, and it's fascinating to know that once, before she was ever a cultural intitution by herself, Swinton was a muse for Derek Jarman, as unique a British filmmaker you could get. Her career has never ebbed, never become predictable, as who can claim to have a Bela Tarr film and a Marvel Studios role under her belt aside from her?

From https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2018/10/suspiria_16_427_AB_SUSPIRIA_
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In terms of point, the original Suspiria was a fever dream, an intense haze nightmare where everything onscreen is symbolically kicked off when Jessica Harper exits automatic doors out into Berlin from the beginning. Suspiria 2018 is a reflection on its existence, very much a dialogue to its older self, but you can see it as a new direction with the same material that can exist by itself, really what a remake should do. Envisioning this film, still set in the late seventies, with lieu to real life politics, it images that witches would have to go through the real world as Germany itself did. The references aren't pointless, as the likes of the Baader-Meinhof group existed because ex-Nazis were still getting in important seats in Germany, not to mention (whilst less references) this is a fractured country, where Berlin itself in the middle of East Germany was a curious entity part of West Germany but geographically was an island surrounded by Soviet occupied land. An irony is not lost either in that, as the Baader-Meinhof group should have been seen as a heroic group, but were just violent and completely indefensible because their ideals were twisted into death, the ballet school's ideals are corrupted by their need to kill and silence.

Even the ballet is now like an incantation each time it's seen, vibrant and (literally) violent in how the female bodies distort and move. When Blanc says it can no longer be beautiful but reflect the world, it's a literal glance of the political world referred to. The failure of the Baader-Meinhof gang itself can even be parallel to the failure of this coven, which has now devolved into "removing" patrons (i.e. leave limbless ballet students like husks in the basements) and their splitting sides like how eventually, when the Baader-Meinhof group leaders eventually committed suicide in prison, their flanks split into significantly weaker pockets.

That this is still a horror film is the really curious thing. Arguably, it belongs to this controversial idea of "elevated horror", a term used for films like The Witch (2015) which is a catch term that can dangerously denote films for people who don't want to be embarrassed into admitting to liking horror films. This Suspiria however is still, for its high-mindedness, still full of things that'd be found in Italian b-movies of the eighties, which is a fascinating curiosity I have to admire. I have to admire, in general, the balls Guadagnino had with the project in general. Remakes have always had a stigma to them, something I attest to as I once embarrassingly tried to put a petition together to stop the American remake of Let the Right One In (2008) before even seeing to the Swedish version, a folly of dumb youth. A lot of the issue, admittedly, was the 2000s-early 2010s I'd argue when remake usually meant lazily putting together the films of yore in the same ways but less well. A little difference goes a long way - even flair, as whilst no way near as good, Gore Verbinski could make a 2002 version of the 1998 Ring film that was his own² - but fully embracing a new tone is something to admire.

Yes, Thom Yorke can't top the Goblin score, but Goblin's score is still one of the best ever created, and they had to hire the lead singer of Radiohead to even attempt the challenge, creating a droning and eerie piece of art in itself. Yes, the cinematography of the original is still spellbinder, but hiring the man who shot Uncle Boonmee, a Thai cinematographer of dreamlike imagery, is an inspired choice as, alien to the territory and time period, he creates something both oppressive yet strangely luxurious. The production and design staff were clearly given carte blanche to work, and whoever was hired to be the dance choreographer embraced their inner Pina Bausch in terms of ritualistic bacchanal rites. So yes, it's a film that has understandably been divisive, but my God, Luca Guadagnino gave it a shot and I have to applaud that.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Nightmarish

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTBkMGNjMDQtYmYwNS00YTllLWJhM2
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1) Reference HERE 

2) Plus South Korea remade the film in 1999 with The Ring: Virus, so let's not kid ourselves in the proliferation of remakes being inevitable and a global language.

Psycho Vs. Psycho (1960/1998)

From https://fffmovieposters.com/
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Directors: Alfred Hitchcock (1960)/Gus Van Sant (1998)

Screenplay: Joseph Stefano

Based on the novel by Robert Bloch

Cast: Anthony Perkins/Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates, Janet Leigh/Anne Heche as Marion Crane, Vera Miles/Julianne Moore as Lila Crane, John Gavin/Viggo Mortensen as Sam Loomis, Martin Balsam/William H. Macy as Milton Arbogast, John McIntire/Philip Baker Hall as Sheriff Al Chambers, Simon Oakland as Dr. Fred Richman/Robert Forster as Dr. Simon Richmond

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

[Spoilers throughout. Even if this is Psycho, one of cinema's most iconic films twice over, doesn't mean I still need to add this.

So Gus Van Sant tried remaking Alfred Hitchcock's most famous film shot-by-shot? Well, that's in itself a fallacy, something of an illusion as upon rewatching Psycho from 1960 in the morning, revisiting Psycho from 1998 in the evening the same day. There's a strange déjà-vu but so much between them which is different; to shoot an exact shot-by-shot film would have meant dialogue and concepts of the past were left in¹, the film shot in the past fully transferred into the nineties (money not changed to a higher value, no Rob Zombie heard in the scene when Marion Crane changes her transport at a used car showroom). It would mean the dialogue was not changed (the "transvestite" line from the psychoanalysis's speech about Norman Bates' back-story not being removed), but also the pace and tone would be kept, which would be strange to experience as over thirty years of influences changed nineties Hollywood cinema considerably.

Its stranger to compare the two's origins. Psycho was a risk for Hitchcock and we forget that, ignored that he had to make the film with his TV crew from his television work, in monochrome rather than the rich Technicolor of his fifties masterpieces, because the sordidness of the material he was adapting was controversial. In an alternative world, he would've fell into the fate Michael Powell did when he made Peeping Tom, also released in 1960, a transgressive film that appalled people and kneecapped his career. Hitchcock, with his promotional ballyhoo, managed to have an incredible hit from a risk in his career. Psycho in 1998 is created by a director, Gus Van Sant, who after a beginning in American indie cinema of the eighties managed to have a huge Oscar winning hit Good Will Hunting the year before; when given the chance to, he decided to spent his metaphorical success coins on that infamous concept I yet love, of artistic follies. The kind where Steven Spielberg makes 1941 (1979), a WWII comedy epic, or Richard Kelly made Southland Tales (2006), the bugnuts zeitgeist of mid 2000s culture, the absolutely divisive production usually hated when first release that get their little cults as time passes.

From http://www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/blog/
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Here, given the keys to make whatever he wants, Van Sant had a thought experiment knowing what films Universal owned the rights to, tried to remake Psycho but almost exactly. It's actually insulting to call his film "Psycho (but in colour)", as colour drastically alters the mood. This is nineties cinema colour, bright and layered, in a time when people wore chartreuse coloured clothing, shot by Christopher Doyle; Doyle, who made his name working with Wong Kar-Wai, is cinematography's Keith Richards, in lifestyle and look, as good with a camera as Richards is with a guitar. The colours are something to cherish in a film full of questions, quirks and misfires; a vibrant and almost plastic at times that, when the original Psycho credits are recreated in green, its an appropriate introduction to how colour itself changes so much of this world before you get to any other adaptation detail.

I'll be blasphemous and say aspects of the 1998 version are superior to the original even though it's ultimately an utter failure. Psycho, whilst a classic worth of praise and canonisation, is not remotely Hitchcock's best work for me, falling a little too in pace when the characters of Sam Loomis and Lila Crane search for her sister, dragging somewhat for a brief bit in the middle and just a series of exposition scenes. The opening skyline shot is awkwardly edited to transition to Marion Crane and Loomis in a motel, reflected that Hitchcock would have appreciated the panorama shot done in the 1998 version. (Whilst not better than the original, I like the 1998 version ending from the car being dragged out of the swamp to linger over the police and the countryside under the end credits, all done with a surf-like guitar piece). And knowing how the exposition dump of the psychoanalysis in the finale is infamous in how long it, to clarify material rarely covered in thrillers at that time, casting Robert Forrester in the role was perfect. In fact, both films can claim to having a pair of Milton Arbogast figures, the detective hired to find Marion, that no person should have to argue about in terms of the best; when one is Martin Balsam, famous for 12 Angry Men (1957), and the other William H. Macy, both are as good.

From https://thejar.hitchcock.zone/files/misc/Psycho1998/py98_005.jpg

Let's talk about the casting. This for me is where remaking Psycho is a poisoned ideal in that an actor who can be great is unfairly forced to compare to someone else, emphasis on why with a story that is repeated a lot (let's say Shakespeare for an example) an actor returning to King Lear or Lady Macbeth must be allowed to breathe in the role even if they say the exact lines as everyone else. Here, the attempt to remake the film of before almost exactly is a trap, where in fact you need an actor to bring their own personality even if the canon is the same as before. Viggo Mortensen I'd argue, honestly, is more interesting than John Gavin as Sam Loomis, an issue in Hollywood's past that they forced many actors into bland white bread figures², whilst Mortensen comes from the period onwards where you could be both a pin up icon but also a serious character actor.

Julianne Moore's Lila Crane however raises a modern concern that, to make you for the marginalisation and sexism of the past, you still need to keep a balance between a credible character as well as a strong one. Even if she's allowed to even kick Norman Bates in the face at one point, the role comes off as patronising than what Vera Miles did in a more sedate version. Also, what was the deal with the headphones? That was an odd decision - she even says she has to go get them even though they are going to Bates Motel in an unintentionally hilarious line of dialogue - and feels like a merchandise tie-in gone wrong; her entire look and attitude, brash in casual clothing listening to her canary yellow Walkman everywhere, would make more sense if the character was a teenager, not Julianne Moore.

From http://cinemajam.com/mag/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/325140756.jpg

Then there is Marion Crane and Norman Bates. Amy Heche tried, though on revisiting the original I realise Janet Leigh's performance is incredible. There is a nuisance when Crane is on the run with the money which Leigh gets perfectly, balancing hesitance and suppressed panic, a stress to her voice when confronted with a police officer when found sleeping in her car that sadly flees out of Heche's hands in the same scene. Psycho is built on the gimmick that Marion is killed halfway through, to the point that Hitchcock had marquees in cinemas saying not to spoil the ending, to even bar people from the cinema if they missed the beginning; but Leigh is as vital as Anthony Perkins is, to the point its part of the reason the original Psycho flags for me, as whilst Perkins as I will get to is exceptionable, once Leigh is gone the film is following actors for the most part who aren't as compelling.

Then there is Norman. Vince Vaughn cannot play nervous - he is like a school jock, not just because of his height but his natural charisma, the nervous laughter more sarcastic. He is good when his Bates gets angry or sad talking about mental asylums or his mother's illness, an actor who was mainly known for comedy who could have untapped potential in this, something to bear in mind as he is clearly S. Craig Zahler's muse in films like Dragged Across Concrete (2018). He has unfortunately been forced to try to recreate Anthony Perkins' role, when his Norman Bates is arguably one of the best horror film performances in American cinema, arguably of all horror cinema. It is tragic he was typecast as a result of this film's iconic nature, unfortunately horror having a narrowness surrounding it when actors capable of potentially more great performances, like Perkins, really don't get a lot of choice after they create an iconic character in horror cinema. His Bates is nervous but charming, a gentleman at first only to slowly unravel so much neurosis and untreated psychological damage to cause a person to worry. The entire speech leading to "we all go a little mad sometimes", despite having seen this film many times before, scared me this time due to his performance. As a horror fan who would argue scaring a viewing is not the most important thing for the genre, when it does frighten me it's something of a mercurial success to experience, next to Brad Dourif's performance scaring me even in the theatrical cut of The Exorcist III (1990) in terms of both being about subdued, nuanced roles; also trust me, whilst the exposition scenes do drag, when Joseph Stefano's script, adapted for the 1998, is allowed to add flavour to itself, its full of many sparks of whit.

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Neither helping Vince Vaughn are the really bad decisions Gus Van Sant made, the moments where Psycho 1998's reputation is understandable due to them. He flubs the shower stabbing, but considering how intricate and difficult the original was to put together, recreating it would be a challenge for anyone. Even intersecting odd details in subliminal images in the murder scenes - clouds, masked nude women, the strangest a sheep on the road - just come off as playful. Bates masturbating to Marion through the peephole and Lila Crane finding a porn mag in his childhood bedroom however are dreadful. They remind me that, controversially, I hated Bloch's original source novel when I read it, thinking Hitchcock's film is superior because he gutted out all the contrived clichés about Norman Bates, who was original balding and overweight, studying occult texts and every unnecessary detail that is an annoying aspect of horror storytelling, something evoked as the sexual undertones Van Sant adds fell like these same heavy handed mistakes.

So Gus Van Sant's Psycho failed but I prefer we would talk of it more even as a curiosity one. I am becoming more intrigued by Sant as, whilst he has made "conventional" dramas, this is a man who jumped genres and types of film regularly. Starting in LGBT low budget cinema with Mala Noche (1985), he has done black comedy in To Die For (1995), oddball premises like Restless (2011), the entire Bela Tarr inspired "Death Trilogy" which absorbed slow cinema aesthetic, or reteaming with Christopher Doyle again with Paranoia Park (2007), a hybrid of the Death Trilogy and his roots in a skate mystery drama. His Psycho is infamous, but its admirable in the way, whilst very different, very comparable to Luca Guadagnino's idiosyncratic remake of Suspiria (1977) from 2018, two art house directors taking a risk touching sacred cows in horror cinema but at least making something memorable between them. It is also ironic knowing Hitchcock took a huge risk with Psycho himself anyway; the remake itself neither forgets the fact where it came from, offering a sincere nod to the maestro in its end credits, and even if he might've found the challenge absurd, a part of me would consider Hitchcock himself, famous for his experiments over the years, to find this entire project of interest.

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1) According to an LA Weekly retrospective, the original screenwriter Joseph Stefano was hired to modify his original script, which is an admirable decision from Van Sant's part.

2) John Gavin to his credit worked with Douglas Sirk twice, such as in A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), so I won't dismiss his acting skill in the slightest.