Directed by Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Starring Cassandra Foret, Charlotte, Eugene Guibeaud and Marie Bos. Horror.

Release date 31st January 2011.

Flickering eyes glisten and glance across the screen in the titles, playing on our expectations of what we are about to receive. We are being watched as much as they are. This is AMER, a modern love letter to the giallo sub-genre and the art of the sensual cinema experience. Focusing on three points in the life of the charming and somewhat gawky Ana, a person who feels permanently the inquisitive guest in her own body, the film is an attempt to convey the intimacy between the thrill of tactile discovery and the siren song of the most sordid of deaths as the definitive physical experience.

The first section focuses on Foley art to convey Ana’s childhood from her own point of view in order that we may experience it with her. It shows us not how we hear things as youngsters, but the mental understanding we (particularly as children) have of our apparently massive surroundings. To little Ana and to us, doors and jewellery are clunking, clanking and rattling cacophonously with our uncomfortable awareness of our bodies in frightening places and our inevitable, curious investigations. Feeling texture with our fingers and understanding the external in relation to ourselves are two different things and our impressions of them change as we switch from thought to touch and back again, just as one of Ana’s smooth hands brushes debris from her opposite, rough elbow.

The child’s discovery of the world around her also leads to truly creepy scenes. There is genuine fright here as taboo and the child’s imagination make haunted mansions of dusty houses and link door locks to monstrous adult themes that hail from a world Ana watches in stolen glances but doesn’t understand. The visions that peek through those key holes to meet her gaze then fragment the film’s world in a kaleidoscopic burst of shapes and dizzying pop art that repeat and remind us of our physical memory of every time our naked skin has been touched.

The second section of narrative concerns consensual voyeurism. Ana is now a young woman with bee-stung lips, pert but bashful breasts and a beguilingly innocent habit of nibbling the tips of her hair with her childhood teeth. In her short summer dress, she steps slowly as the wind raises her skirt to learn the secrets of her crotch, leading to the gazes of a motorcycle gang, the outside world now aware of her femininity. It is an erotic experience coloured by a white filter of freshly assimilated fright and the blocky, black feeling of emotionally exhausted thoughtlessness.

Finally, Ana journey’s back to her childhood home finds the grounds grip her, cling to her, cut in to her and reclaim her for their own. These scenes are perhaps the most obvious love letter to the traditional giallo, guided by a black glove that teases death and desire with the glancing touch of the adult skin.

AMER is most definitely a feature for the auteur. It shows a real understanding of what it feels like to inhabit our bodies, but this is by the same token its downfall. During a number of sequences, the effects simply become too much – the sounds shift from being fresh and atmospheric to an expectant and dull din. What is more, in the evocation of experience, AMER literally forgets its story. While we are traditionally dispassionate about the characters of giallo’s ladies, we may literally lack care as a result of little emotional stimulation. As a piece cinematic sense-scape, AMER cannot be bettered but as a story it is somewhat unsatisfying.

That said, Ana’s half-glimpsed gaze and streaming hair will penetrate your mind’s eye.

Dr Karen Oughton.

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