The Strange Color of My Ire

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
102 minutes
Written and directed by Helene Cattel and Bruno Forzani
Starring Klaus Tange

At the Stanley Film Festival, an annual horror fest that takes place in the creepy, creaky, byzantine hotel in which Stephen King conjured the concept for The Shining (and where the God-awful mini-series adaptation of said book was filmed), I made the irrevocable decision to skip the closing night party, where there surely would have been gaggles of pretty people in snazzy outfits drinking free champagne and smoking weed (this is Colorado, after all), and instead went to the late-night screening of The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears. Before I decided to see the movie I'd emailed my editor, who shall remain nameless, and asked if I'd like the movie. He said, "It's violent, surreal, and stylishly incoherent. You'll love it." I'd already been told by more than one critic that it was an unholy mess, a clusterfuck of stylistic indulgences pantomiming gialli tropes in lieu of actually saying anything original. Anything that polarizing had to be worth a watch. I was ineffably excited.

Before Strange Color, I saw a 35mm screening of the great cult flick Who Can Kill a Child?, which played sans subtitles (I don't speak Spanish), and I interviewed Elijah Wood, but he ended our interview early to go to the bar; he didn't invite me. (The next morning I shared a 3-hour van ride to the airport with Mr. Wood; when he saw a herd of rams crossing the street he pressed his face to the glass and bellowed euphorically, having never seen a ram before, let alone a whole herd. If he hadn't blown me off the night before I'd have found his childlike awe endearing, but he had, so I didn't.)

I had 20 minutes to get to the film on time, so I ran a mile, in wingtips and a denim jacket, to the theater where Strange Color was playing. I arrived heaving and agitated, my shirt suffused with a day's worth of sweat and my feet riddled with oozing blisters, with five minutes to spare. It took me maybe four of those minutes to find the front door, which wasn't on the front of the building. I got in just as the festival's logo adorned the screen. The room was rife with pretty young things ready to neck in the warm glow of slasher horror. I settled into my seat, alone, beads of sweat rolling down my face, ready for whatever.

I was really into it for the first 20 or so minutes. I was promised David Lynch does Dario Argento (that'd actually be a cute rom-com), and the opening of the film almost fulfills that promise. We meet Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange, who apparently only has one facial expression) and the strange apartment building he lives in. Dan has a wife, but she's missing. Maybe Dan killed her,or maybe the people from inside the walls came and abducted her, or maybe she never existed at all. It doesn't really matter. Ascertaining this much plot is a mental workout, actually: writers-directors Helene Cattel and Bruno Forzani (whose debut film, Amer, similarly siphoned gialli style, but with a knowing wink and grin) have no interest in setting up a story, or characters; it's all about the gorgeous look and feel of the film, all about style, the cinematic equivalent to a Stepford Wife. There's a great shot of a record slowly rotating, the red-and-white spiral slowly drawing you towards its center, the camera acting like the mind's eye as the spinning vinyl hypnotizes the viewer, lulling you into a tranquil state of ease.

Dan eventually meets a scary old woman, one of his neighbors, who lurks in a shroud of darkness, her face sheathed, her hands desiccated skinny things. She knows something; scary old women always know something. It's a creepy scene, predicated on how we know as little as Dan does, and Cattel-Forzani keep the tension tight by slowly encroaching, teasing us with glimpses of stuff that might have deeper significance. This constant teasing is what drew me in; My mind reeled and racked, trying to extrapolate the pervasive symbolism and apply meaning to the multitudinous cuts and split-screen shots and the bacchanalia of vivid colors. But none of it means anything. The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears is an exercise in redundant style, as subtle as a sludgehammer and as empty as the space between stars.

A surreal expose on the pleasures of '70s Italian slasher flicks should be fun. Gialli are violent and steeped in style, but they're fun. Argento and Bava turn bodily mutilation into poetic entertainment, the marriage of sound and vision searing into your memory. Think of the opening to Suspiria, or the image of Boris Karloff's sallow undead face beaming in the darkness in Black Sabbath. These are creepy moments, but they're entertaining. Argento and Bava reward viewers, especially Bava, who treats his viewers like close friends. It's like, "Hey, thanks for watching my movie. He's a shot of Boris Karloff riding a horse into a thicket of woods. Enjoy!" Now think of David Lynch's best films, which use surrealism to plunge viewers into singular dreamscapes: they tease us as well, give us myriad sights and sounds to contemplate. The severed ear, the mysterious box, the Mystery Man, those rabbits sitting in a typical filial living room, watching television. Even if you can't surmise what they mean, they leave you with a feeling that something important is percolating below the surface. You don't feel cheated or manipulated, Lynch treats his viewers with respect. But, above all, Lynch never lets his penchant for terror usurp his gift for humor. His movies, dark and dour as they may be, are often funny as hell.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears isn't fun, or funny, or profound. If it wants its viewers to enjoy its company, it does a pretty shitty job. It's like that non-friend who tries to amuse you by insulting you, or punching you, or poisoning your drink and tying you up in his creepy dungeon basement. I felt like Cattel and Forzani were actively trying to encourage me to kill myself to escape the bombardment of stupidity and varicolored excesses they threw at me. The film is a demagogic harangue without any actual ideas. It's hard to remain engaged with a film that so quickly reveals itself to be empty and continually assaults you with verdigris flashes that sting the eyes long after they've numbed your mind. The munificent display of erect nipples and straight razors and hyperactive jump cuts left an acetic taste in my mouth. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for erect nipples and straight razors. But after the fifth time I was forced to watch the same goddamn razor stroke the same goddamn nipple I was seeing red.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears gets one-and-a-half erect nipples out of five

Proxy

"I just came to do the things you couldn't do." 

2013

120 min.

Directed by Zack Parker

Written by Zack Parker and Kevin Donner

Starring Alexia Rasmussen, Alexa Havins, Joe Swanberg, Kristina Klebe

Proxy opens with an attention-grabbing slow zoom backwards, beginning at the swollen, jelly-covered belly of a very pregnant young women named Esther (Alexia Rasmussen). It’s one of those exceptional opening shots that announces the presence of a director who knows what he’s doing, and establishes a certain air of trust. You’re willing to subject yourself to whatever the filmmaker has prepared for you because he’s in control, like a mad engineer at the helm of a freight train. The zoom ends with a carefully composed image of Esther lying on her back, and we look into that hollow-eyed stare, vacant and distant, while a young nurse (played by some actress who isn’t very emotive, which is actually a thing in the film, and it works) tells Esther about her own experiences with child birth. Those experiences are utterly banal compared to what awaits poor Esther.

Pretty much every review of Proxy mentions the brutality of the opening scene, so I went in expecting the worst. Every cut and camera movement had me on edge. I was waiting for it, but I didn’t know what it was. So, of course, when the film greeted me with a lingering take of a dour-looking pregnant woman, I was uneasy; that unease is protracted for the next hour, with nary a trace of respite in sight. Be warned: this is probably not a good date movie.

Esther leaves the OB/GYN and begins to walk to the bus. While passing an alley, an arm suddenly swings into focus from the right side of the frame and knocks Esther out. The unidentifiable assailant then drags Esther into the alley, observes her for a few long moments (kind of like Michael Meyers in Halloween, except not really), and then proceeds to smash Esther’s belly with a fucking brick.

We stay on Esther’s face at first, with the stomach-churning sound of brick thwacking flesh filling in the empty space, but the camera soon grows restless and moves down, showing us the brick tearing chunks of flesh off of Esther, the swollen bump becoming deformed, misshapen. Few films in recent memory have proclaimed their own esoteric tastes with such dauntless conviction.

But we’re not done yet. We get front row seats to Esther’s C-section (this coming right after I watched the first episode of The Knick, so it was a good weekend). By the time the doctors pull the dead fetus from Esther, which we see via her POV, you’re either buckled in and ready, or you’re desperately looking for the exit.

Director Zack Parker displays dexterous control of tone, as well as an equally keen sense of rhythm. His compositions are tight but not claustrophobic; he frames things cleanly, which keeps the squalid material from becoming bloated and indulgent. By using such careful and handsome aesthetics, Parker has essentially made an exploitation flick into an arthouse film. He possesses a pretty obvious penchant for horror, but this isn’t really a horror movie. It’s certainly horrifying, though, a thriller, of sorts—one of those films upon which people slap the slow burn moniker. It revels in its own morbidity.

Proxy is permeated by a strangely beautiful and careful atmosphere of melancholy. The fear stems from Parker’s ability to sustain disquiet and dread, like a minor chord extended over so many bars. The actors, particularly Rasmussen, look like the fleshy shells of people. We follow Esther through her recovery period, her meetings with other damaged women who seek solace in group gatherings. But the more we learn about Esther and her sad, lonely life, the more the unease swells. Esther makes a friend named Melanie (Alexa Havins), whose son and husband were killed in a car accident. Melanie is great, maybe too great. Parker laces the proceedings with terror and occasionally viscera; he employs gore fairly sparingly, but with unflinching assurance. Same goes for the gorgeous, austere score, which is comprised of deadened piano keys clinking pathetically and some Herrmann-esque strings, buzzing with serrated ferocity. Opaque silences dominate the film, but the music makes its presence known. This is a confident piece of work, from that slow-zoom opening to the Von Trier-esque slow-mo carnage cacophony Parker conducts midway through the film.

I do take some issue with people saying the film is full of plot twists. It’s unpredictable, but only because Parker keeps an imperceptible barrier between us and the characters—a placenta, in a way. It’s not that Parker and co-writer Kevin Donner suddenly unload a bunch of new information upon us, or pull the rug out, or manipulate viewers. They don’t coil the plot in such a way as to render everything unfairly shocking. Parker withholds emotional information from us, the way people are wont to do to strangers; characters seem to exist in a void, and we’re not privy to anyone’s thoughts. Even though we closely follow Esther for the first hour of the film, we never really know her. Gradually, subtle slivers of truth surface, like flotsam from the benthos of Esther’s head. We ascertain that she may have asked her unhinged criminal girlfriend to attack her and kill the child inside her because Esther loves being pregnant, but doesn’t actually want a child. She loves the attention, the smiles, the joy she exudes. People actually like her when she’s pregnant. They want to be near her. Esther’s mental degradation becomes apparent, and the percolating fear, originally derived from the ambiguity of the attack (the detective tells her it’s probably someone close to her), and the possible seduction and manipulation of Esther’s implausibly wonderful new friend, now has a new host.

The second half drags a bit, though it ends with another virtuoso display of disturbing violence delivered like a lucid dream. The weak link here is certainly filmmaker Joe Swanberg, who seems to have missed the stoicism memo. He plays Melanie’s husband, and he tries to emote in the aftermath of a personal tragedy, but he feels like a character yanked from a different film. He acts like a father genuinely in grief, whereas everyone else acts like a cipher. Proxy is a film about non-people existing in an artificial world, and those feeble displays of emotion pull you out of the spellbinding rhythm Parker works so hard to maintain. 

Proxy gets four shattered lives out of five.