|
The rich Hammer material is set in 19th-century France, though the stale air of repression hanging over every chamber and hill ensures that this study of women on the verge is Spanish through and through. A cavernous countryside labyrinth sets the stage, the headmistress (Lilli Palmer) establishes the tone of immaculately squelched hysteria, "marked" maidens fill classrooms and dormitories with corseted desire. "But this is a boarding school, not a prison." "If it isn't, we'll make one." Tea and biscuits and insects (Bataille's Histoire de l'oeil) for the newly arrived student (Cristina Galbó), meanwhile the principal's son (John Moulder-Brown) peeps through the crawlspace when not being groomed into a cherubic Norman Bates. One particularly sticky bit follows the virginal heroine poking holes for seeds in the garden with a zoom to the staring groundskeeper at the window, the same ogre's burly hands will later activate the throbbing pipes of the girls' showers. Group prayers intercut with the whipping of a rebellious lass, pleasure moans echoing through embroidery class, assorted perforations (pricked fingers, sticks into anthills) unsettle the elegant widescreen. In this hothouse atmosphere, the murders come with terrible inescapability and fluency—Narciso Ibáñez Serrador creates lushly unsettling effects out of a series of lap dissolves as blood drips on flowers or a second-long freeze-frame of blade on throat. "Healthy minds, healthy bodies" is the official motto, behind it lurks the oppressor's credo ("You made me do this") stitched from one warped generation to the next. Argento in Suspiria has the absolute analysis, the grisly final frisson is expanded and appropriately degraded in Simón's Pieces. With Mary Maude, Maribel Martín, Cándida Losada, Pauline Challoner, Tomás Blanco, Victor Israel, and Teresa Hurtado.
--- Fernando F. Croce |