Bad Mother Produces Tears for Argento

There is something about Asia Argento. She’s absolutely magnetic, almost too the point where it’s impossible to take your eyes off of her. There is a devil-may-care unhinged virtuosity to the woman that is intoxicating, a somewhat skanky shimmer to her movements and mannerisms making her a true original unlike just about any other starlet working today. 

Asia Argento has only her father to blame in Myriad Pictures' The Mother of Tears

Not that she’s a very good actress. Heck, usually she’s fairly terrible, and even in good movies like Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress (which I had the pleasure of seeing twice during this year’s Seattle International Film Festival) I can’t exactly say it was her performance that made me take note of the gal. But there is definitely something about Argento I just can’t quite put my finger on, and no matter what the quality of the film might be (or the heights – or lack there of – her acting talents rise to) watching her is something of a roller coaster ride each and every time out.

All of which makes it all the more curious that her father, the great Italian horror director Dario Argento, couldn’t put her to anything even remotely akin to decent use in his latest epic tale of blood and gore The Mother of Tears. This might just be the first time I’ve ever seen the actress used so poorly. None of the woman’s spark or cagey energy is on display in this mediocre fright-fest, and by the time it was over I almost had trouble remembering she was even in it.

This isn’t the real surprise in regards to the film, of course, but talking about just how far the once-brilliant auteur of classics like Suspiria, Tenebre and Phenomena has fallen in recent years just makes me bitter and depressed. Once upon a time, this was a guy whose films upon discovery in college excited me almost beyond words, watching them in my dorm room snuggled close to that certain someone just about as good as those days got. This was a man with talent to burn, and while the best of his features admittedly showcased style over anything even remotely substantive when said style is as invigorating, sensational and downright kinetically terrifying as what was on display in these who the heck in their right mind really was going to care?

Not me, which is one of the reasons I was so excited to see what Argento had up his sleeves with his latest epic, a gothic ghost story of witches and sorcery intriguingly billed as the final chapter of the director’s Three Mothers Trilogy (Suspiria and Inferno being parts one and two). Yet this film is a disaster almost from the word go. Not only is it ill-plotted and idiotically structured, parts of it are so unintentionally hilarious the midnight audience I saw it with almost couldn’t contain themselves they were laughing so hard. The final borders on the embarrassing, and sitting in the theater I found myself almost wanting to cry having to sit there watching one of my own personal legends fall on their own face so completely.

Granted, there are moments when the master’s old brilliance returns and all seems right with the world. Never a slouch behind the camera, the man unleashes a couple of trademark tracking shots oozing in creepy tension, while some of the blood and gore (especially one woman’s rather disgustingly encounter with a metal spike) has that deliciously gruesome Argento touch no other filmmaker has even come close to matching. 

Be that as it may, the movie stinks to high heaven. It makes little sense and holds even less interest, and with daughter Asia not engaging in a single one of her normally highly unusual shenanigans finding something to keep your attention from waveing is virtually impossible. As horror movies go the only thing scary about The Mother of Tears is that a director as talented as Dario Argento could have lost his once unmistakably virtuoso touch so completely. 

Film Rating: ê1/2  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  2008 SIFF Blog by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  2008 Seattle International Film Festival Home Page
-  The Mother of Tears Theatrical Trailer