Review: Suspiria
Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino's take on Dario Argento's giallo classic, is a divisive film to be sure. It will be a shock to the system for those familiar with Guadagnino only through the beautiful and bittersweet Call Me By Your Name, and it is sure to rankle those who hold Argento's work close to their hearts. This Suspiria is specific in its design - as serious as Argento's was hysterical, cold and grey where Argento's was gleefully lurid - and it has no concern about ingratiating itself into anyone's favour. Whatever one's reaction to Guadagnino's vision, one has to admire his wholly uncompromising view.
The year is 1977, the place is West Berlin. Young American Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) has left her deeply religious family in Ohio to descend upon this unrelentingly grim city whose streets are teeming with political unrest. Susie has come to audition for a place in the Tanz Dance Academy, which itself is unsettled by the recent disappearance of one of its students, Patricia (Chloë` Grace Moretz), who, before she went missing, confided her belief that the academy was being run by a coven of witches to her elderly psychiatrist, Dr. Jozef Klemperer. Though billed as Lutz Ebersdorf in the credits, Klemperer is, in fact, played by Tilda Swinton, who also essays the role of Madame Blanc, academy's lead choreographer, who senses something special in Susie and accepts her into the fold.
Is Patricia crazy or is she telling the truth? Guadagnino wastes no time in answering this question. The Academy is indeed run by witches, specifically the Three Mothers - Mater Tenebrarum, Mater Lachrymarum and Mater Suspiriorum - whose disciples are engaging in a power struggle behind the scenes. The reveal is done in a masterful sequence during which Susie, performing the troupe's signature piece comprised of brutally convulsive movements, somehow hijacks the body of another dancer who is trapped in a mirrored room. Every movement of Susie's yanks, twists, and breaks the other dancer until she is nothing left but a horrifically mangled mess. The sequence is both beguiling and grotesque and it conveys the connection that is developing between Susie and Madame Blanc, a connection that is sure to have dire, perhaps even fatal consequences for all involved.
Dance has always been a form of expression and, here, Guadagnino uses it as a means of both liberation and oppression. The director also expands on the meaning of what it is to be a performer, for what is a performer but a conjurer of spells, to be the vessel through which the power of art can be transferred, to be both the possessed and the possessor. Perhaps the headiness of Guadagnino's ambitions may be too much for those who like their horror straight with no chaser, but there is something compelling about the way in which he attempts to use the genre to speak of gender and sexual politics, the nature of art and performance, and also the way the violence of the past never truly disappears.
In many respects, Guadagnino's Suspiria is a spiritual sister to Darren Aronofsky's similarly polarising, mother! Both films operate in their own rhythm, playing the usual chords in unusual and unexpected ways, and crafting works that are as fearless as well as demanding. Much like the last third of mother!, Suspiria finds a new level of what-the-f**kery in its climactic and operatic bloodbath that is base, baroque and just plain bonkers. You may have no clue what's going on, you may not like it, you may even hate it, but you will never forget Suspiria.
Suspiria
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Written by: David Kajganich; based on the screenplay by Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tilda Swinton, Mia Goth, Chloë Grace Moretz, Angela Winkler, Ingrid Caven, Sylvie Testud, Renée Soutendijk, Christine Leboutte, Fabrizia Sacchi, Malgosia Bela, Jessica Harper, Alek Wek
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