Dance Dance Evolution

Films: Suspiria (2018)
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

Sometimes, I admit, I’m not that keen on catching up with a movie even if it’s been very favorably reviewed. The rebooted Suspiria from 2018, for instance, got reviews in at least the same area code as Argento’s original. Both of my daughters are dancers, or were; my older one is a professional and teaches ballet and my younger one danced seriously until recently when she started college. Since Suspiria, both the original and this version, deal with dancers who find themselves involved in a coven of witches, I find my connection to it a little…odd.

It’s hard to call this a remake of Argento’s film so I won’t do it. It seems rather more like a reimagining. There are clear connections to the original version, of course, but there are also considerable differences. One of those differences is the length. This new vision of the story is nearly an hour longer than the original. A lot of that hour is going to be dance performances, which are honestly slim in the first film. Another major change is the type of company. The 1977 film is about a ballet troupe, but this modern version is about a modern dance company. That may not seem like a difference, but it really is a significant one.

Italy is for Lovers

Film: Call My by Your Name
Format: DVD from NetFlix on The New Portable.

Earlier today, I spotted a tweet from fellow blogger Wendell Ottley commenting that he’d just watched Call Me by Your Name and wasn’t really feeling the love for it. I was about halfway through at the moment (almost exactly), and I get exactly where he’s coming from. This might annoy any number of people who seem to think that this is one of the great films of last year, but, like Wendell said in his tweet, I’m just not feeling it. It’s certainly well-made and it’s pretty enough, but I don’t feel like there’s a great deal here to get excited about.

I should say, though, that there are some things that I appreciate about the film. One is that it breaks a particular “rule” of coming-of-age films. I’ve railed against the fact that this sort of film is almost always about death for young men and sex for young women. Well, this is clearly a coming-of-age film and it’s about a young man and sex. The difference here might well be that instead of coming to terms with his mortality, our main character instead needs to come to terms with his bisexuality or homosexuality. The film isn’t entirely clear on that, which isn’t a fault of the film.