Ten minutes in and you can see that "Amer" has all the makings of a genre classic, not that much of what you're watching makes any kind of literal sense. A little girl, Ana, is experiencing the terrors of the adult world around her in a series of superbly edited, fragmented shots. There is very little dialogue; we see things through the eyes of this child. The genre in question is the horror movie, or perhaps more specifically the 'giallo'. "Amer" hails from Belgium and marks the debut of its co-directors Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani but it could just as easily have been made by Argento.
Here is a film about sex and death and the monsters that lurk in our imagination and in our nightmares and it covers three stages in Ana's life; childhood, adolesence and maturity. Of course, it won't appeal to everyone and you will never see it down in your local multiplex but it's a bold and often brilliant piece of cinema, stunningly shot in widescreen by Manuel Dacosse, (each chapter in Ana's life has its own distinctive look). Catch it if you can.
Here is a film about sex and death and the monsters that lurk in our imagination and in our nightmares and it covers three stages in Ana's life; childhood, adolesence and maturity. Of course, it won't appeal to everyone and you will never see it down in your local multiplex but it's a bold and often brilliant piece of cinema, stunningly shot in widescreen by Manuel Dacosse, (each chapter in Ana's life has its own distinctive look). Catch it if you can.