Product: La Sindrome di Stendhal
Rating: 4.0
Stripped down but different Argento still good
Assistant Inspector Anna Manni is sent from Rome to Florence on an assignment to capture a serial rapist who has raped 15 women and killed the last two. While at the Uffizi Gallery, the paintings have a weird effect on her, she feels herself being immersed in one of them, and collapses. However, the rapist assaults her, then rapes and kills another woman in front of her. The incident leaves Anna traumatized, with feelings of self-despite, insecurity, and pent-up aggression.The kindly psychologist assigned to her describes the title condition to her in describing what Stendhal (the pen-name of psychological novelist Marie-Henri Beyle) felt at an art musuem: "My feeling is so profound that is borders on pity. All this speaks clearly to my soul. Oh, if only I could forget it." Symptoms also include a cold sweat, nausea, anxiety, hallucinations, severe depression, and personality changes.She returns to her home in Viterbo to recuperate from her ordeal, but the rapist tracks her down and assaults her once again. Anna deals with him in a very brutal scene, but hey, he deserved it. But has he really been defeated? And will Anna become her old self?The Stendhal Syndrome is different from Argento's usual fare in that there are no eerie glaring backwash of red, blue, or green, or horror gore. And leave it to Dario Argento to subject his own daughter to some really nasty ordeals, even if it is only acted out. Asia's pretty in a more natural way instead of the artificial movie bimbos are. She's more a dazed, insecure victim here, but she can be tough. Argento's method of exploring human psychology and concepts (be they architecture or alchemy in Inferno, insects in Phenomena, or witchcraft in Suspiria) carry on in this movie--here, he explores the power that art can have on people. No, Goblin or Keith Emerson do not do the music here, but there's an ongoing haunting theme, with a female vocalist singing the notes. Not on the same level as his classic stuff, but still worth it.