{"id":9516,"date":"2014-11-03T20:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T02:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=9516"},"modified":"2014-10-23T11:03:22","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T16:03:22","slug":"the-stendhal-syndrome-1996-dario-argento","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/9516","title":{"rendered":"The Stendhal Syndrome (1996, Dario Argento)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someday I’d like to visit Italy and see if everyone acts the way they do in Argento films, moving all artificially and speaking poor dialogue out-of-sync with their mouths. Probably it’s just a very bad movie. And that’s not even counting the fact that it’s about a rape investigator (played by Argento’s daughter) who gets repeatedly raped (she’s also a cop who repeatedly gets her gun stolen), then it justifies this in the second half by having her become the killer. “He forced his way into me and now I can’t get rid of him.” Worse, I’m not even sure why I watched this. I’d previously read up on Argento and decided which movies might be worth watching (just the ones I’ve seen plus Crystal Plumage<\/em>, Grey Velvet<\/em> and Opera<\/em>), and Stendhal Syndrome<\/em> was not on the list. Maybe I put it on the netflix blu-queue as a placeholder? Anyway at least the picture on the disc looked fantastic.<\/p>\n

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The earliest Asia Argento I’ve seen, two years before New Rose Hotel<\/em>. After being kidnapped and raped the first time she acts prickly towards a creep coworker (Marco Leonardi, love interest Pedro in Like Water For Chocolate<\/a><\/em>) who is relentlessly trying to date her, starts seeing a psychologist (Paolo Bonacelli of Salo<\/em>, one of the few films more icky than this one), and eventually returns to her stress-inducing family (to relax, haha), where she’s followed by both creep Marco and blood-obsessed rapist Thomas Kretschmann (Argento’s Dracula<\/em>, also in Queen Margot<\/em> with Asia).<\/p>\n

Then she kills the rapist but keeps insisting he’s still alive, as she carries on his work, taking out the psychologist, her new French boyfriend Marie (a boy with a girl’s name as the movie continually mentions), Marco and a couple others.<\/p>\n

Moo Orleans:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

And by the way, Asia has the Stendhal Syndrome, which causes you to become entranced by works of art, but the movie doesn’t know what to do with this, plot-wise. It combines well-staged practical effects with the worst computer graphics I’ve ever seen, which is used with Fight Club<\/em> excess (why, when she swallows pills, must we follow them down her throat?). It’s not just 1996 CGI – it’s Italian<\/strong> 1996 CGI. The movie has story problems (a half hour in, it’s already explaining its first scenes in flashback), missed opportunities (Marco brings Buster Keaton videos to a girl who imagines herself falling into paintings, but we get no Sherlock Jr.<\/a><\/em> clip) and the unsurmountable flaw of having no recognizable human behavior. After reading that interview about invisible acting in The Dirties<\/a><\/em>, and watching well-performed horrors like Hellraiser<\/a><\/em> and The Tenant<\/a><\/em>, this is especially disappointing. At least I could enjoy the paintings, the cinematography and the blatant Vertigo<\/em> references.<\/p>\n

Asia takes up painting:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Things I remembered while going through screenshots: (1) Asia gets amnesia between passing out at the art gallery and being raped by the loony, (2) she kisses a fish in a dream sequence, which looks like the romantic opposite of the zombie-vs-shark scene in Zombi 2<\/em>, (3) she sees graffiti come alive in the loony’s lair, (4) her dad is freaky.<\/p>\n

Asia loves fish:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someday I’d like to visit Italy and see if everyone acts the way they do in Argento films, moving all artificially and speaking poor dialogue out-of-sync with their mouths. Probably it’s just a very bad movie. And that’s not even counting the fact that it’s about a rape investigator (played by Argento’s daughter) who gets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[451,58,54,225,1195,302],"class_list":["post-9516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1990s","tag-dario-argento","tag-horror","tag-italy","tag-kidnapping","tag-painting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9516"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9518,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9516\/revisions\/9518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}