The Stendhal Syndrome

 

The Stendhal Syndrome

Release Date - 1/26/1996

Country of Origin - Italy

Directed by Dario Argento

Starring - Asia Argento, Thomas Kretschmann, Marco Leonardi, and Paolo Bonacelli

Ahhh Dario Argento. Within the realm of horror no name may come to mind quicker than the Itallian director, he best known for his relentless violence and signature and artistic cinematography. With films like Deep Red, Suspiria, Tenebre, and Phenomena, the director has carved out a big pedigree for himself. Personally he and I got off to a rocky relationship. My first film of his was the abomination that is the 1998 version of Phantom of the Opera. The film was so bad and left such a bitter taste in my mouth that felt no need to ever touch his films. Years later though and needing something new in my horror catalog, I decided to give him a fair shot. The result was instant love. I utterly adore the man now and he’s had an impact on me as far as filmmaking goes with how to shoot a scene. His works themselves have also gotten my praise quickly too, with Opera and Tenebre quickly becoming favorites of the horror and giallo genres. Indeed, all it took to finally warm up and become a fan of the man was to watch his older films.

But it seems as that isn’t too rare. Many fans of Argento will say that as the years go on that his movies became worse. Most people usually put the fine line of good and bad at the mid 1990s. This tends to drive people off before ever even seeing the film or reading a review with those later works. I can say I’m part of this, though personal experience has also played a hand in my staying where I am. The argument can be made that it isn’t all that fair to just suddenly stop or not be as big of a fan in a certain era of his work. True we can all probably say this about multiple directors, film franchises, TV shows, and other long running series, but it seems weirder here considering how much praise the man gets. With that said I think we give one of these cutoff films a chance, this one mostly due to personal curiosity over the subject matter. The picture in question is The Stendhal Syndrome.

Released in 1995, The Stendhal Syndrome is Argento’s biggest hit within his native country as far as grossings go. It was his second time working with his daughter Asia Argento (let’s try to keep our drooling over her to a minimum please) and was the last (fictional) film for Giuseppe Rotunno, an acclaimed director of photography. Released when it was the film is considered either one of Argento’s last great works or one of many failures. Which side it falls under is completely up to the viewer.

It’ll be interesting as a topic with this being the first article I’ve ever done on Argento. It’ll either be good or it’ll be bad, in the end I can only give my honest opinion. Do note that which this being a mystery the story details won’t be in depth. Don’t really expect a lot of photos either since I want to preserve the mystery and twists as much as possible so that I won’t ruin it for anybody who hasn’t seen the movie. With that said however, lets hop into this moving image.

A detective named Anna Manni (played by Asia Argento) goes to Florence to track down and apprehend a serial rapist and now murderer. However when she goes into a museum she finds herself getting swept up in the paintings, and to her, it is literal. Passing out and shortly coming to she is helped by a stranger. But upon returning to her hotel she falls under the spell of a painting again, the stranger (played by Thomas Kretschmann) in her room. Turns out that he’s the rapist and murderer, he proceeding to rape Anna and another woman in front of her, he then killing this new woman. Anna escapes and the man vanishes without a trace.

Anna returns home and begins the long process of healing. But is she truly free? Can the police capture this monster before he strikes again? Or will Anna have to face him again? And can she overcome the spell that is Stendhal Syndrome?

The movie’s story is honestly bonkers as all hell. Now in all fairness Dario Argento is known for a crazy story or two, as well as how he presents the story. But The Stendhal Syndrome is one of his crazier ones, and it sort of but sort of doesn’t work. On the outside it isn’t too complicated; girl is raped and has to overcome the trauma while tracking down and dealing with her attacker. Heck this has become a big storyline in recent Law and Order: SVU episodes. But when you start watching the movie it just sort of goes down a slope of weirdness. Perhaps including the Stendhal Syndrome (which is an actual thing) is part of it, though it does offer reasoning as to why a hardened cop would be easy to subdue. Yet it basically is forgotten almost as quickly as it is brought up. It almost becomes second note even though it’s the title of the movie. However a big issue for me is that at nearly two hours, the movie is too long. In fact the second half isn’t even needed. I’m not sure why it exists, but it does, and the second half offers nothing really. I kept thinking to myself “This should have ended already.” Yes it leads to a big twist, but it’s actually really predictable considering what else we’ve been shown. So in the end it accomplishes nothing as a twist and is an unneeded second half. The movie should have just wrapped up at the hour or so mark and maybe go a few minutes longer to bring closure. Honestly this is a case where less would be better, and while the story is interesting in concept, it simply doesn’t live up to the potential of that concept and ends up leaving in a bit of an unneeded mess.

Now with a bit of a muffled story it is easy to expect that the characters will probably be in the same shape. And for the most part they’re the same; pretty good until the latter half. With Anna being our main character she gets the most to work with and Asia Argento is pretty good in the role…after the attack. To be honest until that attack Anna is just, there. Even before falling under the influence of Stendhal Syndrome she kind just does nothing and says nothing. Afterwards though? This is where it gets interesting. Like any rape victim Anna is traumatized, dealing with the double dose of being raped and the syndrome, so she changes in multiple ways. She starts boxing and running to get more in shape, she paints to understand art more, she changes her appearance, and her personality changes (which makes sense considering she was a cop who was overpowered and probably had her ego lessened a bit because of it). I won’t give everything that she turns into away, but it is probably the best part of the film to watch her early metamorphis (I’d also consider this the best performance from Asia I’ve ever seen). What about the rest? Well aside from the rapist (which is performed very well by Kretschmann) nobody really stands out. The therapist is bland and rather boring, the rest of the cops are in the same boat, and everybody else is, yeah, boring. I suppose it isn’t too shocking considering the story, but it makes a lot of the scenes really dull and long to sit through if it isn’t entirely focused on Anna or our psycho.

That leaves us with our technical side, and being a Dario Argento picture, this is where you’ll find bona fide greatness. Like the majority of Argento’s work, the film is shot beautifully. Every shot is eyecatching, gorgeous when it needs to be and ugly when the occasion calls for it (yet even then the ugliness is beautiful). If any con was to be found it would be that none of the shots really stand out in terms of being rememrable (i.e. the desk scene in Deep Red, the hanging in Suspiria, the window and painting scene in Tenebre, and the flying scene in Opera). Moving along to music and it is just as beautiful. Composer Ennio Morricone did an amazing job here and keeping in tradition with the films of Argento, the music is sure to stay in your mind. The movie also makes use of CGI (the first Itallian film to do so I might add), and boy is it easy to tell. It really isn’t that great and in one case I wish they would have gone with doing it for real. But what about the violence? After all, one of Argento’s main claims to fame is the luscious brutality in his movies. Well the movie can be pretty violent, Anna’s torture scene is definitely disturbingly violent (I think the Blue Underground DVD cover says it all), and one of the murders (shit CGI and all) is pretty damn brutal. Plus there is a scene which had me shocked how a person didn’t die immediately with how much he was being attacked with. Unfortunately these are the only truly violent deaths, and along with a rather tame one are the only deaths to take place on screen. Content wise the film may be disturbing, but for the most part, it’s rather tame. In general, the technical side of the film is the best, no doubt about it. The cinematography is as beautiful as the majority of Argento’s work and the music is just magnificent. You only really run into problems with the CGI, and anybody expecting a gorefest will be disappointed (though if that’s the only reason you’d want to watch this, just why even?).

At the start of the review I suggested that we would find out if this was the beginning of Dario Argento’s decline into rather bad films. With that critiquing done, is The Stendhal Syndrome where it all starts to slip? Well in my opinion it isn’t, but it does leave a lot to be desired.

The story honestly had so much potential to be a really intriguing, investing, and surreal tale of getting over trauma, both physical and mental. But it falls short due to some odd confusing aspects and a second half that simply is not needed, as well as simply forgetting that one of the main focal points is Stendhal Syndrome. You have a main character that again, for the first half is pretty nicely developed and presented, but slips into random confusing land when that half ends, with the rest of the characters just sort of there. Only when we get to the cinematography and music is the movie put together really well. The CGI presented is really dated and bad looking and while Argento does deliver some brutality, some may find the lack of it being all out a bit disappointing.

In the end, The Stendhal Syndrome isn’t that bad of a flick, it just loses control of itself and falls into madness. If you decide to see it I honestly suggest you just turn it off after the first hour, as it wraps up a lot better there than it does an hour later. But if you want to see it beginning to end, well, you’re in for an experience. This isn’t the beginning of Dario’s fall, but it does almost act as a vision of future events.

C