After 20 years in the wilderness, Dario Argento comes home, with the third chapter of his "Three Mothers" cycle, The Mother of Tears. The series started 31 years ago with his most successful film, Suspira, and its little-seen but no less wonderful spiritual sequel, Inferno. The Mother of Tears marks Argento's latest departure from mundane thriller territory (Do You Like Hitchcock?, Sleepless, The Card Player) into baroque, surrealist horror. Here's hoping he can recapture the giddy heights of the opening sequence of Suspiria and not the dreadful, dour mess of every scene of Phantom of the Opera.
Check out a bloody and sexually charged Mother of Tears clip here. Looks like it possesses the same flaws and virtues as all Argento movies.
I often wondered what Dario's career would've been like if he'd abandoned his self-created genre and branched out into other types of films. Frankly, his work has been stale for 20 years now. Opera was the last gasp of quality and comprehension, with the minor exception of Sthendal Syndrome. I understand that his comfort zone is in the thriller genre and his lone departure, Le Cinque Giornate (Five Days in Milan) was a total failure that never made it out of his native Italy. But what could've been had he switched gears and made his mark in another genre? Action? Comedy? Musicals? The mind reels with the possibilities.
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