Amer (2009) 1080p Olive BluRay x265 10bit EAC3 5.1 - Cabiria

The title is French for “bitter,” but this provocative, sensational debut is anything but. An oneiric, eroticized homage to 1970s Italian giallo horror movies reimagined as an avant-garde trance film, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s pastiche tour de force plays out a delirious, enigmatic, almost wordless death-dance of fear and desire. Its three movements, each in a different style, correspond to the childhood, adolescence, and adulthood of its female protagonist—and that’s all you need to know. Drawing its stylized, hyperbolic gestures from the playbooks of Mario Bava, Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, and Brian De Palma and taking them into a realm of near-abstraction, Amer has genre in the blood. Its bold widescreen compositions, super-focused sound, emphatic music (lifted from original giallo soundtracks), and razor-sharp cuts make for an outrageous and intoxicating cinematic head trip.