Mother of Tears (2007)

Disclaimer: I'm not a hardcore Argento fan, but...

to me, a good movie is a good movie, and a bad movie is a bad movie. And this movie is bad. Really bad. This movie started out fairly promising and caught my attention. By the middle, I found myself growing more and more frustrated by how much I was forcing myself to care. Towards the end, it was a painful struggle not to eject the disk. I simply wanted to know how it ends so I didn't waste an hour of my life watching the first half. To add insult to injury, the ending was so generic and anticlimatic, it might as well have been a Charmed episode from 1998. But not as good. The film builds up and has the nerve to expect you to care about the main character, who is nagged by the generic and silly ghost of her mother to "USE YOUR POWERS MY CHILD!!!" What powers? She can turn invisible at will, which we already know. You're made to anticipate a dramatic finale where she discovers her powers and it helps her to destroy the Mother of Tears. Turns out anyone could have done it with a fireplace poker. She's told her mother was an incredible healer and she inherited her gifts, but nobody is healed...in fact, she's kind of a bad luck charm because people drop like flies when she's around. One is left with the feeling that this movie was thrown together last minute, which is why I find it so shocking that it took over 25 years to conclude the trilogy. The only reason I give this film two stars is that there were a few genuine moments of surprise, and it was filmed beautifully. To balance that out, the movie resorts to gore and gratuitous nude scenes straight out of a Friday the 13th Part 1, 2, or 3...you pick (that's not a compliment). "Mother of Tears" is a pretty accurate description of this poor excuse of a movie. November 29, 2008

Mother of disappointments...

Good start, OK middle, awful ending. Some amateurish acting, hokey dialogue, gratuitous nudity, distasteful killings. Way below Argento's best work, ditto for his daughter, who is mediocre in the lead role. The extra features are interesting, though. November 26, 2008

Oh My...

Which pretty much sums this up. I've never felt compelled to write a review, and as a writer with a number of books on Amazon with varying reviews, I tend not to pay too much attention, but this was an important film to me in many respects-the emphasis being on "was."

I write at night, and religiously watch all of Argento's works at least 3-4 times a year to keep myself entertained. I consider the man a genius, and even thanked him in acknowledgments in one of my books for keeping me so entertained through the years. I had been awaiting this film for several decades, admittedly with unrealistically high expectations but always in the hope that the brilliance and cinematic flair that marked so much of Argento's work would again resurface. Now, after 3 viewings, I am forced to admit that the film is not only a disappointment but is easily outshone by any other number of his works. My problem stems not from Asia Argento's performance, which was adequate, but rather from the film's look and from its plot. I would have loved an attempt to stylistically recreate some of the master set pieces from Suspiria or Inferno, the deep saturation of color, the flowing camera work of Tenebrae, the Grand Guignol atmosphere of a house of evil. It was all missing here. A few colored lights, a few filters, a few dolly shots, and more concentration on the house in Rome as a center of evil, with a malignant atmosphere-any of these things would have gone some distance in setting a tone that matched the first two parts of the trilogy. Critics of Argento like to argue his lack of plotting, but certainly the first two parts were strong in the vital issue of relating a story-and I wonder how much, if any, input Daria Nicolodi may (or may not) have had with this new film, as one suspects her grasp of the magic that so made the earlier films come to life might have helped immensely here.

So many missed opportunities, and even the echoes of previous films-of the pit of human remains from Phenomenon, of Varelli's book from Inferno-seemed pedestrian; I even thought I sensed nods to La Chiesa and to Torso, and it pains me to say that both are better, more satisfying films than this work. The only consolation is Dario's mention of a possible prequel-something I can only hope he does, and does by slavishly returning to form, even if that form is thirty years old and he might regard it as outdated. There is a reason Suspiria is a classic (like Deep Red), and Argento still has a chance to do justice to the story as I know he can do.

The ultimate test, as a truly die-hard fan of Italian horror and of Argento in particular, is Will I keep the DVD? Will I watch it often? It's a yes to the first, but a no to the second, and it saddens me to say that I even find a film like Sleepless or Stendhal Syndrome superior to Mother of Tears. It is definitely worth a watch but a watch with lowered expectations. November 20, 2008

Mother of god...

Mother of Tears (Dario Argento, 2007)

My first thought upon finishing this movie was "we waited twenty-seven years for this?". My second was "I'd be more than willing to wait another twenty-seven if we could get a movie as good as Suspiria, or even one as good as Inferno, out of this mess." The problem being, of course, that the intervening quarter-century and change has obviously disrupted Argento's thought processes on the Three Mothers, and what's left is the cheesiness of the first two movie, but without any of the atmosphere that made the first film brilliant and the second watchable, if not classic.

If you've seen a few Argento films, you know the drill here. Through machinations we see in the first few minutes, an urn is delivered to an art museum in Rome. One of the workers there, assisted by art student Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento), decides to open it. Mandy cuts her finger in the process and drips blood onto the cape contained therein, beginning the resurrection of Mater Lachrimarum, the third mother of the title. Immediately, people start going crazy in Rome, unleashing a tide of violence and mayhem, as Lachrimarum gathers an inner circle of worshipers, most of whom seem to be nubile young things who have an overweening fondness for eighties fashions. Since Sarah started this all, she feels a duty to finish it as well, and finds herself helped by supernatural powers she was unaware she had.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Of course it does; it's pretty standard Argento, but without any of the trappings that made so many of Argento's films such treats to watch. The director seems to have phoned this one in, drawing liberally from the work of inferior directors who were influenced by Argento back in the day (particularly Lamberto Bava; substitute a church for a movie theater and the bulk of this film comes straight from Demons). A depressing, if somewhat unsurprising, conclusion to the Three Mothers trilogy. Go rent Suspiria again instead. **

November 20, 2008

Argento? Really?

I was thrilled when I learned that Argento was finally making the final installment of his "Three Mothers" trilogy. So I pop this DVD in, sit back and.........wonder what the hell I'm watching.

Sarah (Asia Argento) is an alleged "student" at the museum of art in Rome when she and her dim-witted friend decide to open an ominous urn in order to catalog its contents. What could possibly go wrong? Well, how about getting strangled with your own intestines for starters and then pursued by a monkey from hell. Things generally go downhill from there. Apparantly Sarah is the only one who can save Rome from the eponymous "Mother of Tears." She gets some help along the way from an ineffective Udo Kier, and the spectre of her dead, puffy mother.

No one ever said Argento wrote great dialogue or cared much for the development of his characters. His great strength rests in his amazing use of color, of camera shots, cinematography, and soundtrack. How quick cutaway shots can make ordianry things (doorknobs, vents, gutters,) seem sinister. None of this is remotely present in "Mother of Tears." In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Argento didn't direct this at all. I don't see his signature on the film, and so all you're left with is water-retaining ghosts and intestines as garrotes.

I do like that references to both "Suspiria" and "Inferno" were used, but this movie doesn't even begin to come close to its predecessors. Its a sorry conclusion to his trilogy, but I live in hope that the master of giallo's next entry will be more satisfying. November 17, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...