I saw AMER a few years ago, and enjoyed it. A lot! While it wasn't "innovative", it felt like a breath of fresh air, and used great tools to tell a story.
Now with this one... to be honest, I have no clue what it was all about, to the point where I doubt the directors themselves had a clue of what they wanted to say.
Has anybody got any theories, or insights?
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I'm with you there, I really wanted to like this film.... been looking forward to seeing it all year. I like Amer, I love the trailer, I love surreal films, and it was kind of a letdown. The classic 'style over substance'. I might be old fashioned, but I like a little bit of story to tie the images together, at least some character development so I care what happens to the people I'm watching.
shareI liked Amer better as well. This had some interesting visuals but I didn't really get anything out of it.
Passion is just insanity in a cashmere sweater!
There has to be some semblance of story, no matter how insignificant for me to enjoy a movie. This had none of it.
Some neat visuals, but pretty awful. Amer was much better.
Here's my take on the plot. Spoliers are ahead, of course.
Most of the movie is about a middle aged man in a state of emotional turmoil coming to terms with his wife leaving him him.
Along the way he meets people with similar stories of disappearing partners, and eventually learns a woman who used to live in his apartment years ago had the same thing happen to her husband. This is acted out by the husband drilling a hole in the ghost/woman painted on the ceiling and then him disappearing into it. The repeated scene of people getting stabbed in the head is symbolic of people being defeated by this ghost.
I think it is implied that this older man who leaves his wife and the middle aged man whose wife leaves him are the same person but in different eras, or at least they are different people affected by the same ghost. There is some crossover of the stories that doesn't make temporal sense, like the middle aged man talking to the older woman in his bed.
The theme of the middle aged man deluding himself over his wife leaving him is resolved when the scene of him coming home to find his wife gone is replayed at the end of the movie. At this showing, he reads her break up letter before entering the apartment, which is a detail that he had previously blocked out of his mind.
I disagree with all the reviews that there is no story here. There is a story but much of it is conveyed through quite artsy representations of emotional states, rather than explicit explanation.
I'm 100% positive that the directors knew the story they were telling. Everything in this film was intentional and full of purpose. It's up to us to figure it out if we want to... You can definitely follow along but half the time you're being led astray... I imagine these 2 directors get quite a bit of joy out of teasing the viewer.
Also, I think they are pretty innovative. They may rely on the influence of older films visually and technically but no one is making movies like this. No one has ever made movies like this. This one in particular is influenced by giallo but better in every aspect than any giallo ever made. Every shot, every scene, every edit, every camera motion, every sound...was intentional.
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."
Saying that this nonsense is better than Argento or Martino is laughable.
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