Popular reviews

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 7

  filters a not particularly original idea, a young woman's psychic linking of sex and death, through thirty years of Italian (and other European) exploitation -- not, despite what just about everyone (including the filmmakers, though the references here are so specific i think they are just letting go with the simplest categorization available) would have you believe, strictly through gialli. if i might be allowed to get pedantic, an actual giallo homage would have far more dead spots, a lot more talking, and a deeply convoluted and ultimately pointless narrative. no, this is more of an avant-garde triptych that plays with a few large tropes and appropriates a vast catalog of imagery. the first step, a gloved hand preventing a…

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  Review by laird ★★★★ 8

  A body horror in which all of the horrifying transformations take place in the psyche of the protagonist. The act of watching and being watched. The male gaze and the constant threat of sex and violence it implies. An exploration of purely cinematic means to communicate the five senses. These ideas could be treated dryly or academically, but here they are communicated through the cinematic language of Italian thrillers of the late 60s and 70s. The movie equivalent of a reduction in cooking, most of the narrative and character detail is stripped away, leaving only the sensual "essence," the most lurid uses of color, sound, music, imagery, and editing employed during that era. It's not the most accessible movie, but I'm still confounded as to why so many genre fans wrote this off as boring or too arty. I find it thrilling and insightful.

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  Review by Wes ★★★★★

  maybe the closest i'll ever come to experiencing what it would be like to enter some sort of cinematic stargate; completely helpless, terrified, yet awestruck at its beauty and ability to inspire and make one see things they havent before. should i have watched this at 1am? probably not but anything for you amer.

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★½ 4

  Hoop-Tober, Film 5 of 31:

  It’s hard to believe that Amer is the work of first time feature filmmakers. It's so incredibly polished and confident, but then again, it's scarcely a feature film; I almost view it as three separate but interwoven short films, two of them brief and the final one more lengthy. The content is rather obscure and much of the film acts as a loosely-plotted homage to Italian horror films of the 20th century, but there’s enough originality for the film to transcend mere homage and become an experience of memorable distinctiveness.

  Through the portrayal of three crucial days in her life, each of them separated by a space of multiple years, Amer tells the story of…

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  Review by Graham ★★★

  creak
  drip drip drip
  blink
  don't blink
  is this really here
  or am I blind
  juicy
  drip drip drip
  blink
  touch
  breathe

  With a sound mix that vibrantly connects to the kaleidoscope of colourful and thought-provoking imagery, Amer does not mess about. It's quietly direct, and delivers a subliminal kick in the guts as the viewer falls deeper and deeper into the psyche of Ana as her mind blooms. Originally shot on 16mm film and blown out to 35mm to create an authentic 70s grainy-Giallo look, Amer is a thing of great beauty.

  Smooth and erotic, calm yet freakishly scary, this is a complex film for a focused mind. Get distracted, and it will run away from you in a heartbeat, but stay close and it will bring great joy.

  HORRORx52 challenge by kynky
  35. Directed by a woman

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  Review by Willow Maclay ★★★★½ 1

  Cinema of bodies and eyes. Constant male gaze runs throughout commodifying the female body. The lead's sexual awakening and guilt brings notice to the world around her that's watching always. There's pure horror in the nature of the male gaze through the power dynamics at hand, but she reshifts this power finding strength in her own body. Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani's homage to giallo pictures of the seventies is experimental in nature. It is broken up into three vignettes of womanhood and finds it's power in images that are constantly shifting and playful in their diversity. It's almost Denis-like in how brilliantly they shoot around bodies in ways both sensual and terrifying. Some of the images are a little unsubtle in their meaning, but the film is so beautiful I'm hard pressed to actually care when everything is this beautiful and consistently engaging.

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  Review by Wes ★★★★★ 6

  i think i just watched the last movie ever made.

  no, im pretty sure i did. dont let the "homage to giallo" selling point fool you for very long; this very much is a love letter to a seemingly bygone era of cinema and yearns for its magic touch, but it does much, much more than that. if anything, Amer makes me realize just how little ive scratched the surface in the cinematic language of giallo. Amer worships its many roots and it shows. but i cant find the words to describe the ways it pays homage yet completely and utterly fucks with your sense of reality as its own entity and creation. i cant find the words to describe…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 6

  Like The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears, Amer is an experimental take on the giallo which uses its genre influences in order to rise above them.

  At its most basic level, it's a story about a girl growing up and becoming a woman: we see Ana, the protagonist, at three stages of her life (as a child, as an adolescent, and as an adult) and watch how she evolves through time. Thematically the film focuses primarily on the development of Ana's perception of sexuality and death, and how they eventually become strangely connected.

  What really amazes me about both this and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears is the editing. It’s very in-your-face and obvious about its disregard…

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  Review by GoodBadMovies ★★★½ 10

  Ana ist noch ein kleines Mädchen, als sie im verwunschenen Anwesen ihrer Eltern dem Leichnam ihres Großvaters begegnet. Zwischen Angst und Neugier ist sie dem schweigenden Haus ausgesetzt, in dem eine düstere Gestalt umherwandelt. Als Teenager im Sommerurlaub erlebt sie erotisches Begehren und Begehrt-Werden, für das sie von ihrer Mutter hart bestraft wird. Als junge Frau schließlich kehrt sie in das Haus ihrer Eltern zurück. Hier verlassen die Dämonen ihrer Vergangenheit das Reich der Fantasie und werden zu einer realen Bedrohung...

  Das Langfilmdebut von Heléne Cattet und Bruno Forzani ist ein psychedelischer Bilderrausch in dem optische Giallo-Motive extrem ausgereizt werden. Die Kameraführung, die bunte Farbpalette, die Musik, die Sexualisierung... "Amer" fühlt sich wie ein moderner Neo-Giallo an, der die Vorzüge…

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  Review by Dr. Ethan Lyon ★★★

  4th Hélène Cattet, 4th Bruno Forzani (after The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, Let the Corpses Tan and Yellow Room)

  Part 30 of Giallo Andiamo Ancora!

  Exquisite form, as with all Cattet/Forzani, but this definitely feels like the least of their features. They're masters of aping the style of the 70s, especially Martino, but their perfectly cut moments of rhythm feel empty, motivated by a love of the image rather than their meaning. Fetish for surfaces and skin being torn to shreds, carnality without cognition. Wonder what this would look like on the big screen, in 35mm, filled with the texture of celluloid. Would the crevices and curves of the flesh become tactile? Would it bump it up another star? We'll see. For now, a bit disappointing.

  Cattet/Forzani in Order:
  1. Let the Corpses Tan
  2. The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears
  3. Amer
  4. Yellow Room

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  Review by Wes ★★★★★ 3

  when there's nothing scarier than beginning to discover who you really are. a giallo silent film made in the 21st century (!) that does nothing but look inward, inward, inward. very possible/probable that this is the scariest film ive ever seen, for reasons both personal and cinematic. welcome to the church of helene and bruno, for they have made a miracle.

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  Review by Disgustipated ★★★★

  What the fuck just happened to me?

  I couldn't sleep, my body was aching, my mind was racing and I felt like screaming until I ruptured my throat and died gurgling in a drowning pool of my own blood.

  Then I watched Amer. It was all lurid reds and greens, keyhole secrets, feverish moans and unspoken desires. Clothes that go rip in the night and beads of sweat that run down a young woman's breast. The distressed creak of black leather gloves and the glint of a razor blade in the pellucid coolness of monochrome blue.

  At least I think I saw something like that. The interference patterns that radiated outwards from the intersections of my insomnia afflicted perception apparatus and the slow burn brain fuckery of this film certainly spiralled me down into the cold sweats of a million and one retrograde Giallo fever dreams.

  I am really tired.