La sindrome di Stendhal

Art has always played an important role in Dario Argento's films. In his films we meet paintings that trigger murders, sculptures which kill, musicians and ballet dancers whose lives are threatened. And important scenes take place in art galleries, on the stage and at book and antique shops. His way of using the arts as a basis for his murder stories gives an extra dimension to the plot at the same time as Argento can pay tribute to those artists he admires. Edvard Munch, Edward Hopper, Tomas de Quincey and Giuseppe Verdi are a few of the masters which can be detected by taking a closer look at his scenery. In his latest film, Stendhal Syndrome, Argento integrates the actual artistic experience into the story to such a degree that it plays a principal role and even appears in the title of the film. The story is based on a strange illness the French philosopher and writer Stendhal relates in one of his travel books which he suffered after experiencing beautiful buildings and works of art during a journey in Italy. Several similar cases were recorded after this and the illness became known as Stendhal 's syndrome, after the first patient to connect the symptoms of the illness with the experience of objects. Today there is a clinic in Florence with several empty beds ready to take care of new patients who suffer from hallucinations as a result of powerful artistic experiences. The work at the clinic is supervised by a female doctor who Argento worked closely with when he wrote the outline for his new giallo-thriller. At the beginning of the film we meet a young woman, played by Dario's daughter Asia, who with dragging footsteps visits an art gallery in Florence. She appears to be almost afraid of the magnificent works and supports herself against a stone sculpture as she is (along with the viewer) sucked into the sea of an oil painting. She loses consciousness and hurts herself in the fall. We soon learn that she is a policewoman who is hunting a brutal rapist and murderer. The young woman is very upset by the bestial acts of cruelty and searches both night and day for the perpetrator who during the film adopts almost superhuman proportions. Her work is not made easier by her regular hallucination attacks brought on by her own ''Sunday painting'' as well as graffiti on the walls she passes. In typical style, Argento depicts with an infernal camera a person who loses touch with reality and who is pulled into a world of painful sudden death. RS

Medverkande
Asia Argento, Marco Leonardi, Thomas Kretschmann: Producent
Dario Argento & Giuseppe Colombo: Manus
Dario Argento, from a story by Argento & Franco Ferrini, inspired by the novel by Graziella Magherin: Foto
Giuseppe Rotunno: Musik
Ennio Morricone: Talat språk
English