“Okay; so you figure once he kills
the mom, the kid, and the girl, there’s no one left to slaughter.”
My friend was trying to ease my mind
regarding the cascading torrent of blood during an early scene in the French
import High Tension. At that point I
peeked out from behind the protective forcefield that is my notebook and made a
confession: “This is my first slasher movie.”
It’s true. Despite over three decades
roaming this big blue marble I’ve never crossed paths with Freddy Krueger,
Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers. I haven’t seen any of the horror classics or
even the Scream trilogy. Craven,
Romero, and Argento are all names I’ve heard, but I couldn’t identify any of
them if they were to walk up to me and leave cleavers in my skull.
By now you may be wondering whether
I’m actually qualified to discuss High
Tension. I’m not. But for some reason I wanted to see this flick. Perhaps I
figured the French would be subtle about their gore. Golly, was I wrong.
Alex and Marie are headed for Alex’s
home as High Tension opens. They
drive, they bicker, and once the girls reach their destination they settle in.
Then the doorbell rings and the butchering commences. The initial offing is
extremely gruesome (and almost caused me to bail out), another death is
disturbingly protracted yet well shot, and one murder is thankfully off-screen.
But the killer, who we first meet as he’s getting (severed) head in his rusty
truck, is much smitten with Alex’s Cro-Magnon beauty and abducts her. So the
heretofore hidden Marie, with her taut body and pixie haircut, takes off in
pursuit.
And then there’s a nifty twist that I
won’t reveal, but I think my exact words were “This just got good.”
High
Tension, which was made in 2003 by a director (Alexandre Aja) who was made
in 1978, is the latest manifestation of a growing trend: Hit foreign films
getting a wide American release in pretty much their original form (i.e., Kung Fu Hustle). And like Hustle‘s Stephen Chow, Aja has obviously
cut his teeth on Hollywood movies. He pays homage to the often-misogynistic
clichés of the genre in which he’s working but doesn’t always do what’s
expected. The handheld camerawork is fluid and unobtrusive, the pacing is
airtight, and the tension is… well, it’s high. Just don’t give too much thought
to the logic behind any of it — Aja sure didn’t.
“This is so totally Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” my
surprisingly bloodthirsty friend gleefully observed as the killer fired up the
nearest power tool.
Whatever. I couldn’t pick Leatherface
out of a lineup.
Being
a movie star has very little to do with a person’s ability to act and
everything to do with the camera’s affection for that person. Penélope Cruz is
a movie star, and up until now her fame could arguably be attributed to her
exotic beauty. But in Sergio Castellitto’s imperfect Italian melodrama Don’t Move, Cruz uglies it up and,
unable to fall back on her natural allure, turns in a deft performance that
hints at some formidable talent lurking behind that gorgeous visage.
Castellitto also stars in the film as
Timoteo, a relatively affluent surgeon with an equally successful wife (Greta
Scacchi lookalike Claudia Gerini) and a 15-year-old daughter whose bike
accident sets the film into motion. As he waits for his wife to return from
London, Timoteo’s solitary vigil for his severely injured daughter causes him to
reminisce about his relationship with a small-town hotel maid named Italia
(Cruz) just prior to his daughter’s birth.
Timoteo met Italia after his car
broke down in her village — he used her phone and then proceeded to rape her.
The reasons for the brutality are unclear, and since this is the key event, it
hampers the rest of the film. Italia and Timoteo eventually embark on an
affair, with tragic consequences.
Don’t
Move was adapted from a novel by a woman (Margaret Mazzantini,
Castellitto’s wife), yet strangely smacks of masculine fantasy. We know Timoteo
regrets his actions, but that doesn’t deter him. He rapes and lies without ever
being subjected to any actual repercussions himself — only unconditional love
and acceptance from the women in his life, followed by a very tidy wrap-up to
his dilemma.
But I keep going back to Penélope
Cruz’s performance. She’s nearly unrecognizable here, with her bushy eyebrows,
streaked hair, defeated posture, and gap-toothed grimace. She’s definitely not
pleasant to look at, but she is a treat to watch. This is her movie and the
best reason to see this frustratingly flawed film.
High Tension(R) opens Friday, June
10, at Canandaigua Theatre and Greece Ridge 12 | Don’t Move (NR) opens
Friday, June 10, at the Little Theatre
This article appears in Jun 8-14, 2005.
