Premiering in the Special Gala section of this year’s Berlinale, the latest film from Italian director Dario Argento is surprising in more ways than one. Rather than copy the style of the giallo films from the 1970s and 1980s that made him famous (“The Bird with the Crystal Plumage,” “Deep Red,” and “Suspiria,” to cite just a few), his “Dark Glasses” finds ingenious ways to retain the core of the giallo while adapting to our current times.
As in any good giallo, women are in peril, blood gushes out of open wounds, a killer lurks, and the police are completely useless. The film’s main protagonist is Diana, a high-end sex worker who lives comfortably in an apartment of her own; there is something equally congenial in just how mundane her encounters with her clients are. As played by Ilenia Pastorelli, Diana is a no-nonsense woman who knows how to take care of herself, isn’t afraid to say what she thinks, and has no qualms about her profession. She is also endearingly ordinary: in one early scene, she stops by the side of the road to find out why people are staring at the sky, only to then hurt her eyes by looking at the solar eclipse for too long. It’s an eerie moment of course, and the retro electronic score by Arnaud Rebotini (composer on Robin Campillo’s “BPM”) imbues it with a foreboding aura. But Pastorelli’s energetic performance and Argento’s comparatively low-key direction underline its factual realism more than any heightened connotations.
It’s a kind of pragmatism embodied in Diana’s down-to-earth behavior, but also in the film’s focus on bodies, blood, and gore. After Diana burns her retinas, she simply puts on the eponymous dark sunglasses to protect her eyes and gets on with her life — one cute scene features her in lingerie but with her glasses on. Juxtaposed with her comings and goings is the first murder: another sex worker leaving a hotel is attacked, strangled from behind with a sharp wire. The use of practical effects here to show the dying woman’s sliced neck is judicious: beyond being a fun throwback to the genre and to a kind of practical horror cinema rarely made anymore, it also makes for a shockingly realistic image that further anchors the film in an aggressive physical reality.
Giallo fans probably would prefer extravagant sets and color filters everywhere, but whether due to limited means or simply lack of interest, Argento here favors a more low-fi type of giallo horror that is more confrontational than it is formally fetishistic. Surprisingly, this does not translate into the kind of awkward, clunky direction sometimes seen in the “late works” of master directors. Though the filmmaking here is unremarkable, it is competent and efficient, particularly during action and killing scenes: when Diana, chased by the killer, crashes her car into that of a family, the impact is especially gruesome.
Diana wakes up in a hospital, blind from the shock to her neck — a silly, giallo-esque turn of events if there ever was one. It is then that the film moves into more interesting and original territory: far from being only a victim whose expected comeuppance has simply been postponed, Diana carries on being her tenacious self and rolls with the punches, continuing to see clients. But she is no fearless girlboss either, and Argento is once again particularly tender in showing her blossoming friendship with her coach Rita (Asia Argento), and with the only other survivor from the crash, a young boy of Chinese descent called Chin (Xinyu Zhang).
Asia Argento is almost touchingly normal in the role of this new friend who has come to help Diana learn how to live as a blind woman, and Argento’s attention to some of the things she shows her — how to use a cane, how to lead and talk to her guide dog — suggests a world where such gestures, though they may seem small, are precious. Likewise, when Diana visits Chin at the Catholic orphanage and gives him a Nintendo Switch, her standing up to the other kids who bully him is a small thing that nevertheless means a lot to him. Perhaps because both are alone and, in some ways, outsiders in society, Diana and Chin soon decide to team up in order to survive — first, everyday life, and then, the killer’s rampage.
“Dark Glasses” is in some ways predictable, but it works precisely because it establishes very well a contrast between the casual yet meaningful kindness of Diana and her new friends, versus the destructive impulse of the killer. Though there aren’t that many ways the story could go down, we still care, because the stakes are a lot more intimately felt than the usual “will she make it out alive.” Together with the firm confidence of its execution, perhaps it is this sincerity that marks “Dark Glasses” as a touching late work from a master. [B]
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