Suspira

Well, call me the outlier on this one. Maybe it's bias, maybe it's just having not seen the original (yes, I know bad cinephile) but Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria is the real deal. A remake that doesn't try to imitate the 1977 giallo classic by Dario Argento but instead retell it's story with a fundamentally different style and tone. It's an approach which gives the film an intensity of it's own, undiminished by comparisons to its predecessors.

Guadagino both retains and leans into the original setting of 1977 Germany where former Mennonite Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) joins the Markos Dance Academy, a school specializing in interpretive dance and led by Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton). When she arrive though Susie finds the school distraught at the disappearance of student Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz), last seen visiting her psychiatrist Dr Klemperer (also played by Swinton under the psudonym Lutz Ebersdorf). As Susie rises through the ranks of Markos's dancers she finds herself closer and closer to the truth that drove Patricia away. Blanc and the other teachers at the school are witches and intend her Susie to be the subject of their approaching sabbath.

The relocation to Berlin, rich with its Bahaus-style architecture, compliments Guadagnino's heavily bleached colour scheme. Devoid of primary colours the film takes on an atmosphere of brutality that sharply punctuates scenes of injury and body horror. Meanwhile the chaos of living in a city literally divided by the Cold War reflects Guadagnino's magical realist approach to the atmosphere at the Markos Academy. The witchcraft at play is mysterious and violent but also understated, used in a purely practical, even mundane capacity. The witches themselves are slyly knowing figures but ones riddled by insecurity, frivolity and ego. Even the momentous act of appointing a leader is handled with the kind of simplistic routine one applies to writing a cleaning rota.

Into this mundanity comes Swinton's Blanc, one of the few characters to adopt a genuinely ethereal air. Swinton's weighty prescence gives the character a commanding air that stays with her even as she grows progressively more vulnerable. The counterweight to her performance is Susie, the innocent ingenue unaware of the power within her that only grows as the film proceeds. It's the kind of role that, after three Fifty Shades films, Dakota Johnson excels in. Imbuing Susie with a sense of uncanny awareness to her initial waifishness. It gives her a compelling screen presence that suitability masks the fact that her character is little more than a cipher for much of the film. A subject of the plot rather than a participant in.

Supporting turns are delivered by Moretz and Mia Goth (last seen playing much the same role in A Cure for Wellness). Goth's permanently wet pout gives a vulnerable edge to what is primarily an expeditionary role. Moretz on the other hand is delivering a much more tensile performance as Patricia. Filled with a manic energy and paranoia that her flimsy German accent does nothing to diminish. Indeed Patricia's ambiguous identity only reinforces her unstable and traumatised persona.

Guadagino makes a questionable choice in opening the film with Patricia raving about the school. As if to add a hint of psychological ambiguity to a story concerned with very real psychological threats. It feels shoehorned in to allow the inclusion of Dr Klemperer who's story and themes gel little with the main plot of the film. While it's a heartfelt performance and it allows the characters to articulate the plot it's hard to ignore the fact that Klemperer could have been lifted from the film entirely with little consequence.

Then again the qualities of Suspira have little to do with plot and more to do with atmosphere and performance. In that sense Guadagnino has delivered a thoroughly atmospheric experience. Filled with tension, intrigue, pain and horror Suspiria is a worthy successor to it's namesake and one of the best films of 2018. An experience like no other.