Asia Argento’s wikipedia page is not as slavishly well kept as we’d imagine.
After male “teen” writer J.T. Leroy — a salacious, press friendly back story that included prostitution, drug addiction and vagrancy — was exposed as a fraud in 2005 (was actually proved to be writer Laura Albert and played in public by actress Savannah Knoop) — we thought the actor/director publicly decried the stunt and gave up directing. After all she made an entire film based on Leroy’s now-proven-to-be-fraudulent short story memoir, “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things” (and lord a gloriously, unwatchably bad one at that).
But it turns out, the roguery only made her feel monumentally cheated to the point of creative paralysis.
“On a human level I’m glad the [fake JT Leroy] story didn’t [actually] happen to somebody,” Argento told the NYTimes in 2007. “But I feel incapable of writing a movie now, and it’s a result of that deceit” (also Albert claims that Argento and Knoop had a sexual affair on the set of the film, but that could easily be more B.S.).
Fast forward to three years later and it appears that Argento has finally shaken her artistic funk. According to the new issue of Production Weekly (the issue itself not online), the actress is now actively developing a new drama called, “A Hunting Gun” that she’s writing with Michele Civetta and Yasushi Inoue. Civetta is of course Argento’s husband and is a filmmaker and multi-media artist known for making music videos for bands like Lou Reed, Sparklehorse, Marracash and Yoko Ono. Inoue is a Japanese writer who material spans works of poetry, essays, short fiction, and novels.
What’s the film about? Let’s go to the synopsis.
Josuke, the owner of the hunting gun pursues a longtime love affair with his wife Esther’s older cousin Sylvia. The story is told from the viewpoints of three women who are closest to Josuke: Sylvia, his beautiful and secretive mistress, Susy, her disillusioned daughter and Josuke’s conflicted wife Esther. The characters’ hearts hold deep secrets and the more each person is true to themselves, the further they retreat into their own worlds. A deeply nuanced and evocative love story with a fatalistic twist.
Love, lies, sex, secrets and potential tragic endings. Sounds like a very Asia Argento project. When will it come to the screen? Well in “active development” doesn’t sound like it’s camera-ready or totally even written, but let’s assume its got some legs and is on its way when it finds funding by… probably the French (agnès b. Productions are apparently the producers, so probably)?
Obviously the daughter of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, it feels like Argento hasn’t really been on screen since 2006 and 2007 when she had the awesome trifecta of “The Last Mistress,” the little-seen Abel Ferrara stripper movie, “Go-Go Tales” (lord baby Jesus, we want to see this) and Oliver Assayas’ grossly underrated sexual noir, “Boarding Gate” in theaters (ok, again Ferrara’s only made it as far as Cannes that year). But she’s actually done a few other films as well, but most of them seem rather forgettable (and her father’s 2007 film, “Mother of Tears” is apparently intolerably horrible).
Anywhoo, we kinda love Argento and her proclivity to instantly shed clothing every time the purr of a camera motor is within spitting distance of the actress. Her directorial efforts so far might not be great (or even good), but hey, practice makes perfect, non?