Movie Review #1: Tenebrae

I am reliably informed that it was a suprise when director Dario Argento returned to his detective thriller roots after many succesful supernatural films - I, however, am more suprised that this film had a director at all. In fact I nearly fell off my chair when I discovered that the people on screen were proffesional actors being told what to do by a director rather than a group of people that happened to stumble their way into a film studio and not manage to act their way out of it.





The plot of Tenebrae was well-used even on it's 1980 release. The main 'character' (if such a word can be used) is Peter Neal a crime writer who has recently relased a violent and bloody book by the name of 'Tenebrae' - and some murderers only gone and started copying the fictional crimes haven't they! God, I hate it when that happens! The action takes place in Rome for a reason that is never really fully explained and is even more mystifing when you take into consideration that every single character in it speaks fluent English. There is even a scene where the murderer is hiding from detection and observes two Italian plumbers in an Italian hotel unaware they are being watched and yet speaking English to one another. I get the feeling that the Italian director wanted the mouintain to come to Mohammed rather than vice versa, the only problem is I think it may have got damaged in transit.





I struggle to get my head around the aesthetics of the film as well. The only explanation I can think of is that the entire cast and crew of this film were snatched from their cradles at birth and were forced to wach crime/horror films every hour of the day without any contact with the outside world. The effect of this is that the world we see in 'Tenebrae' is as far from the world that you or I live in than Middle Earth. When one of the 'characters' is snooping around in the garden of one of the suspects in a rainstorm, a bolt of lightning is suggested through what I can only imagine is the headlights of a Fiat Punto being switched on for possibly three of four times the length of time a lighningbolt actually lasts.





The film falls into the trap of most horror/crime films from the 1980's in it's overly sexual imagery. Whilst we don't have the staples that films like 'Scream' go on to pastiche in the next decade, there are many cheeky glimpses of breast just for the sake of it. One of the murderers victim are a pair of lesbians- one of whom is in a bar with her nipple poking out at one point whilst when she gets home she really goes nuts and walks around wearing just a sheet around her waist. If I was taking this film as a piece of historical documentation I would have said that at this period of time the bra was not invented due to the sheer amount of unsupported breasts and cheeky nipple flashes - but then again we are in the eighties so I suppose I can't hold this against them too much.





Whilt knocking the actors the two primary actors aren't too awful: Anthony Franciosa, a kind of Aldi-version of Harrison Ford, does a passable impression of someone who has actually felt emotion before and then there's Giuliano Gemma, who looks and acts like a cross between Columbo and an Italian version of Alan Hansen.

This film, however, will hold pride of place in my heart as having the worst ever actor I have ever seen in anything ever - Step forward Christian Borromeo. Borromeo portrays a character called Gianni and for the majority of the film stared gormlessly around as if he had been thrust in front of the camera when he felt like he should be doing something far more important. This character's girlfriend is mauled by a dog and then found with an axe in her torso - now I have never experienced such a scenario so maybe I shouldn't judge too harshly but I am certain that in the next scene I would not be grinning inanely and leaping around like a spaniel. Borromeo can't take all the blame however. The scripting is awful - he and Neal are exploring the house of one of the suspects and could be slaughtered at any point yet it was felt necessary for him to squeal "I haven't been in another man's garden since I was six" Goodbye tension!

All-in-all it is a simply laughable film - but maybe that's not entirely bad thing. At no point did I want to stop watching but that's more down to it's camp value for any kind of legacy that it will leave on the world of film.

Hadrian VII by Frederick Rolfe

George Arthur Rose is a writer of potboilers in 1800's London who has been spurned by the Catholic church. However through a combination of a hasty reconcilliation with his faith and the opaque politics of the Vatican Rose sees himself elected Pope Hadrian VII. From this position he manages to put the world to rights both politically and in his own life. However his position is put into doubt when some spectres fom his past come to Rome to try and topple him from his the Papal seat.

You do not need to have a Masters in Creative Writing to see the similarities between Rose at the begining of the book and Rolfe's position in society. Rolfe himself was rejected by the Catholic church and felt that he had been let down by the church throughout his life. With this in mind it is clear to see that Hadrian VII is a process of wish-fufillment for Rolfe. Using Hadrian as an analouge Rolfe has been able to spout his disenchantment with politics, national identity, religion, royalty and English nationalism and when Hadrian has to defend himself against his naysayers it is an opportunity for the author himself to defend his life choices.

Whilst this may not sound like it would make good reading the novel has an inexplicable charm. Whilst their is not much 'action' in a conventional sense the book never drags and you can't help but get caught up in the politics and the intrigue of the Vatican. In this sense the novel comes across like an ecclesiastical version of an episode of West Wing. Putting aside the subect for a second, the style of writing adopted by Rolfe is simultaneously unique and beautiful and the intensity of the language really bears fruit in the closing chapters of the book. Whilst we are used to the protagonist being loose cyphers for the authors beliefs this idea of a fantastical autio-biography or an idealised life story is one that has been consigned as an Edwardian curiosity - more's the pity.