Amer

The deliriously stylish Belgian film Amer, which revolves around a highly imaginative (and perhaps borderline mad) heroine named Ana, offers an homage to the beloved Italian horror genre known as “giallo,” complete with overripe colors, intense close-ups, visceral imagery, flamboyant camerawork, hints of voyeurism—and, in a departure from the norm, almost no dialogue. Amer is a movie seen through keyholes, down hallways and staircases, through windows, and under doors, but mostly via the overheated mind's eye of Ana (played as a child, adolescent, and adult by Cassandra Forêt, Charlotte Eugène Guibeaud, and Marie Bos, respectively) as she transforms family drama and everyday encounters into hothouse moments of sexual desire and repression, conspiracy, witchcraft, stalking, and murder. We see the young Ana attempting to extract a pocket watch from the stiff hands of her grandfather's corpse, and then imagining him awakening; the teenager strutting before a group of leering men and realizing the power—and threat—of her sexuality; and the grown woman facing terror from a menacing taxi driver and a masked slasher. Writer-directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have re-created the texture and psycho-sexual atmosphere of giallo's greatest works in a triptych that could be a horror flick, a coming-of-age story, or a twisted Walter Mitty adventure from a Dario Argento fanatic. Unlikely to have wide appeal, this cult-film-in-the-making is still a strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)