Watched this belatedly after loving their follow-up The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears. Some critics who’d seen Amer said that Strange Colour was the same ol’ thing, but I doubted that would be a problem since Strange Colour was supremely stylish and enjoyable, and sure enough, so was this.

I’m grasping the story even less here, or at least not grasping how they’re supposed to work together, except visually/stylistically. It’s in three parts, each following Ana at different ages. Firstly, young Ana is fighting to the death with the family maid Graziella over Ana’s dead-ish grandfather’s locket.

Then sullen teenaged Ana follows her mom into town, having sensual visions of escape.

Finally, adult Ana returns to the old family home, and is maybe murdered by a black-gloved stalker.

The directors are sound-effects fetishists (and use 1970’s movie scores) so the whole thing sounds as great as it looks. No familiar actors: Ana’s father Jean-Michel Vovk is in all the Cattet/Forzani movies and cab driver (murderer?) Harry Cleven was in a couple of Godard films. Can’t tell if the movies are all empty style or rich and deep, but they’re a total blast to watch and mysterious enough that, if having people over to watch weird movies was a realistic option, these would be the top contenders.

EDIT 2018: Had someone over to watch Amer, which is still awesome.