An Italian Psychotraumatic Thriller
Story: Stendhal Syndrome is defined by good old wikipedia as being, “a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place,” and that's the very first thing that our main protagonist, played by Asia Argento, experiences in this movie.
[SPOILER HEAVY SYNOPSIS] She goes to an art museum and becomes overwhelmed by the art and forgets that she's a detective trying to track a rapist. This ends with the rapist finding her and doing to her what rapists do best. The rest of the movie is her playing cat and mouse with the rapist, as well as trying to psychologically deal with the combined trauma of being raped and her experience with Stendhal Syndrome. At no point is the audience convinced that Asia's character is sane, because immediately after succumbing to Stendhal Syndrome, prior to being raped, she forgets her name, job, and identity. We see her with the rapist, but we never see any other characters around. Because Asia's character has already shown a lack of sanity, we begin to wonder if there really is a rapist at all. [END SPOILERS]
The storyline is crafted well enough and was decently original. I have to give this a B.
Acting: There were some very strong performances here, and unfortunately I can't quite deduce which actor played which character, so I will have to identify them by their occupations. I was particularly impressed by the art student, the sort of boyfriend, and, well, the rapist himself (if I ever run for political office, I know that quote will come back to haunt me!) and Asia Argento gave a great, if slightly disturbing performance considering that this movie was directed by her FATHER! I mean, she gets beaten up, bloodied, does horrible things, goes crazy, and gets raped not once but twice in a very graphic manner... and her father was behind the camera? Entertaining, but creepy! B
Direction: Dario Argento cast his daughter in this movie, the sick bastard! Besides that, the direction was pretty good overall. The audience felt disoriented with Asia's character and very much empathized with her along the way, even though they should be questioning her sanity throughout. B
Visuals: This movie would not have worked without the art that was selected for the museum and Asia's home later in the movie. They all helped to create a surreal atmosphere. However, this was the first Italian movie to use CG... and it shows. The CG looks very bad and jarringly out of place when it appears. C
Overall: This is a decent little movie, even if it suggests deep rooted issues within the Argento family. It should have been shorter, but it's not in Transformers 2 territory of obscenely long. B
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