Dir/Scr: Dario Argento. Italy. 2007 98mins .
The new work of Italian horror specialist Dario Argento, Mother of Tears forms a trilogy of the two macabre, hyper stylized works that made his international reputation: Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). The time away from the material has certainly not dulled the director's senses or brought about any new reflection. As a piece of narrative, however, the movie is virtually incomprehensible.

Mother of Tears works most effectively as an associative succession of startling imagery, its overtly sexual nature bound to cause equal amounts of discomfort and dread in the suggestible. By casting his daughter Asia Argento in the lead role, as a young art restorer trying to untangle her mysterious family history and comprehend her own unnatural abilities, Dario Argento intensifies the personal, almost autobiographical aspects of the three films. Asia is a rapturous, extraordinary presence who concentrates a work that lacks narrative cohesion.

Opening the Midnight Madness program at Toronto, the movie, also known as The Third Mother, is likely to play to a young and aggressive male crowd by playing both to the esoteric and the grindhouse. The market for hyper violent horror movies founded in forms of sexual menace (Hostel 2, Captivity) has been highly restrictive, even disappointing of late. The movie's best returns are likely to be found in DVD and ancillary markets. The two Argentos are a more commercially potent draw in Europe than America.

Dramatically the anti-naturalistic language yields to sometimes highly uncomfortable comedy; it also sustains the movie's strange sense of dislocation and disorientation. Argento and his cinematographer Frederic Fasano use the architecture and landscapes of Rome to produce some very strange and unsettling imagery.

The discovery of a 19th century urn contained within a coffin at construction site near a Vieterbo cemetery awakens the annihilating, terrifying Mater Lacrimarum, the third Mother (Atias), a terrifying black witch. Her emergence unleashes an apocalyptic rage of social breakdown, mass suicides, mothers killing their children and uncontrollably vicious street violence.

Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento) is an art restorer whose lover, Michael (James), is the curator of the Museum of Ancient Art of Rome. From the moment she witnesses the grisly, ritualistic sacrifice of her colleague, Sarah realizes something is terribly wrong. She is also trying to discern the unexplainable occurring around her, the mysterious voices that protect her and help her unlock her own hidden powers.

As Sarah comes to realize the full extent of her identity and her special connection to the Third Mother, Dario Argento rapidly expands the body count. The violence is twisted, gruesome and confrontational. The result, depending on your appreciation of the material, is either avant-garde or very sloppy.

More problematically, much of the imagery has an unmistakable sexual metaphor, particularly the recurring use of deviously phallic objects to penetrate or violate the almost exclusively female victims. Other than Asia Argento, the other performers are deliberately crude and amateurish, often resulting in a work that feels more ludicrous than inspired. The blunt style, sometimes something of an assault, features all manner of incident and flamboyant characterization, including a passel of contemporary witches who resemble the Spice Girls on crack.

Dario Argento assaults most manner of film language, eschewing exposition or transitions. The visual style is influenced by graphic art (ink black panels that reveal the backstory) and 19th century painting. Argento lets loose with ear-splitting aural effects, a particularly malevolent monkey and The visual style is very flamboyant, the subjective camera movement marking the darkest, surreal impulses.

Production companies/backers
Opera Film(It)
Medusa Film
Myriad Pictures (US)
Film Commission Torino Piemonte (It)

International Sales
Myriad Pictures (US)
(310) 279-4000

Executive producers
Kirk D'Amico
Giulia Marletta

Producers
Dario Argento
Claudio Argento

Screenplay
Dario Argento
Jace Anderson
Adam Gierasch

Production designers
Francesca Bocca
Valentina Ferroni

Editor
Walter Fasano

Cinematography
Frederic Fasano

Music
Claudio Simonetti

Visual effects
Lee Wilson

Cast
Asia Argento
Udo Kier
Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni
Cristian Solimeno
Adam James
Moran Atias
Valeria Cavalli
Philippe Leroy
Daria Nicolodi

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