Amer (2009)

Just perfect...

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Saw this movie at Frightfest Glasgow.And let me just start by saying oh my good god and holy ghost and mother mary, this is so fantastically boring.Yeah, yeah, before you get your sweats in a wrinkle, I get that it is supposed to be "art", and blah-blah. But that doesn't mean it has to be boring.There is close to no horror here, it is absolutely not a horror movie. There is one scene that is actually pretty creepy, but that's it.No more. No more horror for you! Get out!Really. It is a lot of, uhm, silence, and, I don't even know what to call it. Just, super mellow. People looking through key-holes(?), scarfs blowing in the wind. I don't know. I feel a little douchy, because I'm sure the people who made this are nice hardworking people and I doubt they would call this horror. It should definitely not be shown at a horror movie festival. No, no, no.It should be shown at a can-you-stay-awake-though-this-festival.During the whole movie I hoped for the horror to start. In every scene (feels like about 14 hours long) you wait for something to happen, then no. Just a new scene with nothing cool. I was so happy when this movie was over. That's not what you want from a movie!

I have seen so many reviews of this flick in foreign magazines that i thought that it was worth searching. It was easy, it came out straight from my country. But I know how Belgium movies are. Mostly they are, sigh, so typical Belgium, it's about swearing and eating. Now and then some do are successful and are remade in the US, just look at Vanishing (spoorloos), the Belgium version was better or at Loft. But now it's all about Amer. A not so typical Belgium one, it should come straight out of the mind of Dario Argento or David Lynch. The techniques used at the editing did remind me of Lynch's work or even the work of Lars Von Trier. But it's more than that. The use of colours only blue or green did remind me of Suspiria or Inferno. And by that we said it all, it's an arty giallo. The killer with black gloves, you know it all. The special effects used for the old man and the slaying is excellent. Extremely close-ups of the razor going into the flesh. It's almost for the whole part unspoken so really, it will not be for slasher fans but for those who are into the old giallo's I surely recommend it, and just ask yourself a question, where did I hear that soundtrack before.

Amer is structured in three sections and deals with the experience of Ana, who is shown as a child, a teenager, and a young woman. The movie is hyper-stylised, and intensely saturated with colour. Amer is doing its best possible to get you inside Ana's sensorium, although it's also highly voyeuristic at the same time. This dual perspective seems to coincide with the mixture of a male and female director, and produces a view of Ana en ronde.Reviewers have made a lot about the relation of this movie to giallo, and indeed the film does contain many cine-literate references to the genre; however giallo fans may be disappointed by this steer. Whilst there are quotes of visual motifs, reuse of classic soundtracks, and a similar overall atmosphere, the movie isn't a murder mystery. Stylistically it's more likely to appeal to those who like late Argento, films such as Stendhal Syndrome, which is bonkers, and has a hysterical female lead, or those who liked the dream sequence at the start of Lizard in a Woman's Skin.I also think that the giallo focus doesn't lend one to expect what is more a film about the shock of life, this confused, vulnerable, painful, tantalising, quizzically rich shiver, over in a flash.The voyeuristic perspective of the movie is certainly arousing to those oriented in line with the mise-en-scène. After the example of Russ Meyer, Amer contains a mons-veneris-fixated shot, here dogging teenage Ana from behind, capturing the diaphanous ripples of her minidress hem in a blatant long take.The first sequence, reminded me very much of my childhood dreams, intense, baroque, magic lantern type dreams, at a time of life when darkness was dark, not eigengrau. Another type of nostalgia Amer induced was of bloodfulness, of being at an age where one still has vasomotor tone, and this exquisite feeling of warmth. There's a capturing of the sensitivity of youth (that time when coffee wasn't purple, to make a "Welt am Draht" joke). Ana's bed is shown canted at night, all in orange against a blue curtain and a black backdrop, this is the phantasmagoria of a child's nighttime. There's also a well-captured feeling of the pre-moral state of childhood, that age before seven when children merely behave themselves out of respect for the power you hold over them.One other thing the film is good at is bringing you into its world, by including imaginative yet very recognisable stimuli, such as sitting down on leather in an over-heated car, trilling the teeth of a comb against your mouth and the sound of contact on teeth (cf. the nervous rattling of a glass against teeth in Suspiria).There has been a criticism of Amer as a long short film, but, like a foot long hot dog, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's just unusual for a form such as Amer to receive funding as a feature.

"Amer" shown recently at Cinema Village, is a film that deals in psycho sexual matters in the stylized way European directors love to present. It is a creepy movie that involves a lot of ideas that play, in a way, like a stylized video, but without music, and lyrics. In a way, it reminds us of some of those installations at MOMA, where videos like this play to captive audiences, exciting some, but boring most of the people that approach the space.The film was conceived by Belgian directors Helen Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Evidently, it is their tribute of those 'giallo' Italian films, of which Dario Argento has made a career directing. There is story behind the images one sees on the screen. Much is left to the viewer's imagination since what happens in the film has no dialogue, but it is clearly the story of a young girl that is traumatized from her early years, first by the death of her grandfather, and then by witnessing a passionate sexual session by her own parents.After a while, the film becomes somewhat tedious because it appears to be pretentious, trying to find audiences that find pleasure in watching this genre, but without Mr. Argento's humor. Cassandra Foret and Charlotte Eugene-Guibbaud play Ana, as a girl and then as the teenager she becomes. Marie Bos is seen as the adult Ana.Manu Dacosse is the cinematographer who works with dark images to convey the creepiness of the atmosphere the directors were after. The editing by Bernard Beets arranges the different shots in an artistic way to please the viewer.