Why you can trust 12DOVE
There's good news and bad for fans of Amer (2009), Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s hallucinatory art-horror debut.
The good: this super-strength second helping features even more bodily tears and even stranger colours. The bad: it’s even more indulgent.
The plot sees Klaus Tange’s Dan searching for his wife in a Brussels apartment building beset by stabby, psychosexual intrigue. Though gorgeously shot and soundtracked, the fetishisation of sensation over sense gets frustrating, fast.
The result is a love letter to the giallo genre spelled out in cut-up ransom-note writing – striking, but impossible to read.
Matt Glasby is a freelance film and TV journalist. You can find his work on Total Film - in print and online - as well as at publications like the Radio Times, Channel 4, DVD REview, Flicks, GQ, Hotdog, Little White Lies, and SFX, among others. He is also the author of several novels, including The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear in Film and Britpop Cinema: From Trainspotting To This Is England.