Daniel Lerch's feature debut Saturnalia—which on Friday received its world premiere at the Raindance Film Festival—wears its influences on its sleeve, and anyone with a passing interest in genre cinema will immediately recognise the film's main touchstone as being Dario Argento's 1977 masterpiece Suspiria. Argento's film was remade, rather loosely but to good effect, by Luca Guadagnino in 2018, although Lerch appears to have little to no interest in that version as he constructs a work that occupies the fine line between homage and pastiche. Certainly, Lerch's film is the most overt riff on Argento since Brussels-based duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani served up The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears in 2013.
Just like Argento's Suspiria, the 1970s-set Saturnalia begins with a taxi ride on a rain-lashed night as a female student heads to her new boarding school. Lerch's protagonist is Miriam Basconi (Sophia Anthony, excellent), an orphaned young woman who has been sent to Alstroemerias Academy, an exclusive and elite Virginian college presided over by the bellicose Ms. Hemlock (Velvet), who predictably makes life very difficult for her feisty new charge—as do two other girls (Maddie Siepe, Morgan Messina) in the cohort. As the hazing continues, the only potential allies for the new arrival take the form of Hemlock's louche enforcer Holden (Dante Blake) and the mousy, victimised Hannah (Amariah Dionne).
Here, as in Suspiria, it's clear that the crimes of those running the school extend way beyond their harsh treatment of some of the boarders, and Hemlock makes little attempt to disguise her viciousness. The mystery here is not who, but why, and Lerch sets about whipping up an atmosphere of dread and anxiety as the student population starts to decrease, and he's aided by some fine cinematography from Max Fischer, who also doubled as the film's producer. Suspiria is often misidentified as a giallo, which is perhaps understandable given Dario Argento's prominence in the genre, but its no-surprises nature is one it shares with Saturnalia and marks it out from the likes of Deep Red, Tenebrae and The Cat o' Nine Tails.
Fischer's camerawork does a good job of approximating the look of Suspiria, a film whose vivid colour palette served as a last hurrah of sorts for the Technicolor process in Italy—Argento used the company's last facility in Rome for his film—as cheaper alternatives were becoming available. But Saturnalia's biggest coup is securing the services of the legendary Claudio Simonetti to provide the score; Simonetti and his band Goblin composed the music for many an Argento film, including, naturally, Suspiria, and his perfectly calibrated contribution to Saturnalia augments the film without ever being showy. This is an assured, well-crafted horror, one that will hopefully enjoy a long life on the cult movie circuit.
Hands-down the finest film of 2024, Jane Schoenbrun's jaw-dropping sophomore feature I Saw the TV Glow is included in BFI Flare's Best of Year strand, where it plays tomorrow alongside Queer, Will & Harper and Power Alley. Schoenbrun's debut feature, the lo-fi experimental horror We're All Going to the World's Fair, was an unsettling and narratively challenging effort that centred on a sinister online game; while that ambitious, creepypasta-like film heralded the arrival of an exciting new talent, it only hinted at what the filmmaker would achieve with their next feature. In many ways, We're All Going to the World's Fair feels more like a precursor to Kyle Edward Ball's Skinamarink than it does to I Saw the TV Glow, despite some obvious thematic connections between Schoenbrun's films—which form part of a trilogy that will be capped by the director's debut novel Public Access Afterworld.
I Saw the TV Glow wears its influences on its sleeve, and the core of the film's DNA can be traced to Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, the work of David Lynch in general and Twin Peaks in particular, and The Smashing Pumpkins' track "Tonight, Tonight" (and its Méliès-inspired video). Schoenbrun's film begins, almost in medias res, in the analogue mid-90s, when teenagers Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Owen (Justice Smith) bond over young adult TV show The Pink Opaque, which centres on two girls who share a psychic connection they use to fight evil; Owen isn't allowed to stay up to watch the programme when it airs, so Maddy supplies him with grainy VHS tapes of the episodes. When Maddy suddenly goes missing, presumed dead, the series is cancelled; but she resurfaces eight years later, prompting a confounded Owen to rewatch the frankly terrifying finale of The Pink Opaque.
Looking to explain her disappearance, Maddy takes Owen to a bar called the Double Lunch, a venue that appears in both reality and The Pink Opaque, and as such seems to serve as a nexus between worlds; in an overt reference to Twin Peaks: The Return's Roadhouse and its musical guests, we watch Sloppy Jane perform the mesmerising "Claw Machine" on stage before Maddy embarks on her story. The detached, dissociative Owen, who once reneged on plans to run away with Maddy, again loses his nerve as she outlines what he needs to do in order to emerge from his torpor, and Maddy subsequently vanishes for good. Years and decades pass as Owen works at a cinema, then an indoor amusement park, while Maddy and the series seem all but absent from his thoughts—until one rainy, restless night, when he decides to stream The Pink Opaque, which is now quite different from how he remembers it.
In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-like The Pink Opaque, one of the protagonists, Tara, is played by singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan, whose band Snail Mail contribute a cover of "Tonight, Tonight" to the film's soundtrack; moreover, Amber Benson, who played Tara Maclay in Buffy, appears here as the mother of one of Owen's schoolmates. Yet this meta-trivia never proves distracting; somehow, the haunting I Saw the TV Glow manages to be both immersive and self-reflexive, and its beguiling crepuscular world(s) may make the viewer as obsessed with the film as Maddy and Owen are with the unnerving YA show. This eerie, near-unclassifiable work is no mere pastiche; it's a heartbreaking, highly singular piece of mise en abyme cinema, one that gets under your skin and stays there for days.
François Ozon is nothing if not prolific, and Peter von Kant, which screens today at the London Film Festival, marks his 21st feature film; an impressive tally, given that his first full-length effort, the singularly unpleasant Sitcom, was released a mere 24 years ago. Ozon's next feature but one after Sitcom, Water Drops on Burning Rocks, was an adaptation of a work by Rainer Werner Fassbinder—a filmmaker who cranked out films at a rate that makes even Ozon look like a slouch. For his latest feature, Ozon again looks to Fassbinder, whose 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is given a makeover in which the title character, as evidenced by the slight tweak to their name, is now male. Fassbinder's film was an all-female affair, and although Ozon doesn't go as far as to completely invert this setup, his take on the story primarily focuses on male characters.
It appears that much of the reasoning behind this bold decision is so that Petra can be conflated with Fassbinder, with the resulting Peter played by the superb Denis Ménochet. Ménochet has given many fine performances in recent years, including his turns in both Custodyand Ozon's outstanding By the Grace of God. He appears to be having a great deal of fun as the main character in Peter von Kant, who is a monstrous, cruel and self-centred filmmaker ostensibly intent on turning Amir (Khalil Gharbia) into a movie star—although it is quite clear that his interest in this young man is more personal than professional. A mainly silent witness to the drama that unfolds between Peter and Amir is present in the form of the director's factotum, Karl (Stefan Crepon), who observes the histrionics in a calm, detached manner while attending to the whims of his waspish boss.
Peter, Karl and Amir are counterbalanced by three female characters, all of whom are related to Peter: his cousin Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani), his daughter Gabrielle (Aminthe Audiard), and his mother Rosemarie (Hanna Schygulla). All three have an impact on the increasingly drink-addled filmmaker, who appears to have no line of demarcation between his work and home lives. That said, virtually the entire film sees Peter camped out in his apartment, which is perhaps to be expected when you consider that the film(s), like Water Drops on Burning Rocks, started out life as a Fassbinder stage play. But Ozon is too savvy a filmmaker to allow Peter von Kant to carry the air of a filmed theatrical performance; rather, in what might appear to be a counter-intuitive move, he leans into the artifice, in the process creating a compelling, claustrophobic work, one that replaces both the staginess and iciness of Fassbinder's film with the keen sense of mischief prevalent in many (but not all) of Ozon's previous works.
In a film which is about, inter alia, blurred boundaries, Ozon gets considerable mileage from the slippery relationship that exists between his film and Fassbinder's, even going so far as to cast one of the original film's stars—Fass regular Schygulla—in a supporting role. It is difficult to work out if Peter von Kant is a remake, companion piece, reboot, homage, or palimpsest, and in some ways its unusual connection to its source material puts it in the same sphere as both Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria—a film that also cast a Fassbinder favourite (Ingrid Caven) in a small part—and Jerzy Skolimowski's EO, the latter of which also plays at this year's LFF; in a move that parallels Peter von Kant's use of Adjani, Skolimowski's film also features a member of French acting royalty, Isabelle Huppert, in an extended cameo. Regardless of your level of familiarity with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and/or The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, there is a great deal to enjoy in the taut, spiky Peter von Kant, which runs to a crisp 85 minutes. François Ozon's ability to change style from one film to the next is really quite remarkable; fortunately, given his track record, we shouldn't have to wait too long to see what he does next.
Moordvrouw star Renée Soutendijk is back on the big screen in this lavish, controversial remake of Dario Argento's classic 70s horror. The past few years may have seen Soutendijk become a fixture on RTL 4, but recently both the Amsterdam-born actress and her Moordvrouw co-star Thijs Römer have enjoyed parts in theatrical films. Soutendijk, of course, is well acquainted with the silver screen, with her many film credits including some of Paul Verhoeven's early work; she also gained much attention for her portrayal of Hannie Schaft in The Girl with the Red Hair. Her presence in Suspiria appears to be the result of some homage casting by director Luca Guadagnino, who has also included Fassbinder favourite Ingrid Caven and "slow cinema" doyen Fred Kelemen among his eclectic ensemble. At the other end of the spectrum, the film features the likes of Fifty Shades starlet Dakota Johnson and Marvel actor Tilda Swinton (admittedly, the latter is no stranger to arthouse fare, and both actresses have worked with Guadagnino before). Argento, who has a producer credit on the new film, also went with some surprising actor choices for his original, casting old pros Alida Valli and - in her final film role - Joan Bennett.
Guadagnino's film is set in 1977 - the year Argento's film was released - and the basic premise is the same as the earlier movie: young American Susie (Johnson) arrives in a wet and windy Germany to study at a prestigious dance school. Susie's arrival coincides with the disappearance of fellow student Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz), who's convinced that the academy is run by a coven of witches. It's no real secret that Patricia is actually telling the truth, and she tries to impart this information to her psychotherapist, who in turn tries to tell the police that the girl's disappearance is the work of the women in charge of the school. The West Berlin police have little time for such tales, given that both the city and the country are in the grip of a fear perpetrated by the Red Army Faction; as Suspiria unfolds against the backdrop of the German Autumn, you could say that two types of terror are simultaneously at work here. Such a move grounds proceedings in a reality that was wholly absent in Argento's film - a work which could easily be viewed as a colour-saturated fever dream. As fascinating as the Baader-Meinhof story is, I'm not convinced that Guadagnino's idea is the better of the two.
While either one of these two plot threads would be enough for one movie (cf. Argento's Suspiria and The Baader Meinhof Complex), Guadagnino and his scriptwriter David Kajganich add on another layer involving German national guilt and the holocaust; at times, this aspect provides some poignant moments, yet at other points it feels borderline distasteful. Linked to this element, however, is a sad and touching story involving Patricia's psychotherapist, the inconsolable Dr. Klemperer (Lutz Ebersdorf), whose wife (Jessica Harper, star of the original film) vanished in the chaos of 1943. Klemperer regularly crosses divided Berlin to visit the couple's East German dacha, where he feels the sadness especially keenly. The doctor's tragic story is obviously a motivating factor in his determination to solve the disappearance of Patricia, but his enquiries inevitably lead him to the sinister dance academy and its icy lead choreographer Madame Blanc (Swinton), who presides over a number of matrons (played by Soutendijk, Caven and Sylvie Testud, among others). Klemperer tries to warn another student, Sara (Mia Goth), of the sinister nature of the academy, but she angrily dismisses his claims; Sara has befriended Susie, who we should remember is both the film's main character and the star of ominous dance show Volk, which the students are preparing for a public performance.
Suspiria is something of a paradox: there was absolutely no need to remake Argento's masterpiece (which is now available on an outstanding 4K UHD disc), yet the very idea of doing such a thing provided a level of intrigue which made it, at least for me, one of the most anticipated films of 2018. An inherent weakness of the new film is that Guadagnino is no director of horror, let alone an Argento, and it's obvious that he's looked to other areas to compensate for this; the film is never scary, and it falters whenever it has to deal with familiar genre tropes - although it is occasionally unsettling. It is, incredibly, nearly a full hour longer than the original, and wears its pretension on its sleeve as it languidly moves through its "six acts and an epilogue". And, while immaculately photographed, it doesn't come close to replicating the unique visual aesthetic of Argento's film. There are lots of other reasons why the film shouldn't work, but, just like the witches featured here, it sure knows how to cast a spell.
The closest point of comparison for the movie is Gus Van Sant's Psycho - both films share a perverse aim in remaking an established masterpiece, and the two remakes stand as bizarre art exercises whose existence is infinitely stranger than any of their content. Which is saying something in the case of Suspiria, which is an elliptical, fragmented rumination on motherhood and collective memory masquerading as a horror film. However, the movie does very much succeed in creating a strong sense of time and place: Bowie's Berlin is that most atmospheric of settings, and the film is certainly an immersive experience which pulls you down the rabbit hole right from the off. The performances are committed, too, with Johnson making for a surprisingly appealing lead, while Goth continues to impress. But the film very much belongs to Swinton, whose work here is nothing less than staggering - it's best if you can go into the movie without doing too much reading up on it, as you'll find the experience to be all the more rewarding if you're ignorant of certain facts; at the very least, make a point of avoiding the film's IMDb page until after the screening. Guadagnino's take on Suspiria, then, is a quite unique beast: pointless, yet also a must-see.
