Mother of Tears
by Dario Argento
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DVD details
Actor: Adam James, Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno, Moran Atias, Valeria CavalliDirector: Dario Argento
Brand: Genius
Producer: Dario Argento
Writer: Dario Argento
Producer: Claudio Argento
Writer: Adam Gierasch
Writer: Jace Anderson
Writer: Simona Simonetti
Writer: Walter Fasano
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-09-23
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Weinstein Company
DVD Reviews of Mother of Tears
DVD Review: Oh, mother! What tears!
Summary: 1 Stars
Twenty-seven years is a long time to wait for the final part in a trilogy. And unfortunately, the eagerly anticipated The Mother of Tears does not look like a film that was twenty-seven years in the making. It seems more like a rehash of older ideas that was hurriedly thrown together at the last minute.
WARNING!!! SPOILERS ALERT!!!
While I try not to give away all of the plot, there are some definite spoilers following. If you intend to see this film fresh, read no further.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!
The Plot: During the excavation of a graveyard in Rome, a coffin is found in an unmarked grave with a mysterious wooden box chained to it. The Monsignor of the church sends the box to a museum in Rome, where he hopes his friend, Michael, the museum's curator, will be able to shed some light on its contents. Michael is away when the crate arrives, and his two assistants, Giselle and Sara (Asia Argento), are unable to resist opening the box on their own. Inside they find three talisman figures, some knives, and a tunic with some strange writing on it. When Sara goes to another room to retrieve some books to help with translation, the three talisman figures and their pet monkey appear and horribly murder Giselle. Sara returns to see the strange figures toying with Giselle's remains, and, aided by an unseen savior, barely escapes with her life.
The police react with suspicion to Sara's story of the three deformed figures and a monkey. She and Michael, the curator, begin to make plans to track down the meaning of the artifacts and their relation to Giselle's murder when Michael's son is kidnapped. Michael disappears to look for his son, leaving Sara alone with the mystery.
From there, Sara wanders from person to person, seeking help with the situation, amid the growing chaos of a violent crime wave that has seized Rome, and the arrival in Rome of scores of witches from all over the world, come to celebrate the return of the Mother of Tears. Along the way, she encounters an exorcist (the always-delightful Udo Kier), a psychic, and an alchemist, all of whom give the young woman a lead in the mystery, and all of whom are then murdered in grisly fashion.
The story of the Three Mothers who have ruled the world for a thousand years is helpfully recounted by the exorcist for the benefit of Sara and the film's audience, briefly covering the plotlines of Suspiria and Inferno to tie the three films together. There are a few inconsistencies in the storyline. Mater Tenebrarum, for example, is referred to as the Mother of Pain rather than the Mother of Darkness. Most of these can be overlooked as realistic inconsistencies in the characters' researches and knowledge, but none of it amounts to much anyway. There are a few intriguing ideas, but most of them have already been covered in Inferno. One tale of the Third Mother is told over a series of drawings that may be intended to evoke classical woodcuts, but actually look more like comic book illustrations.
The psychic, for her part, helps Sara establish visual contact with the spirit of her dead mother (played by Daria Nicholodai, Asia Argento's real life mother) who appears, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, as a spectral figure to give advice whenever Sara gets into a tight spot. (The line "My mother was a dancer" suggests that perhaps the part was originally written for Jessica Harper, the star of Suspiria.)
The alchemist had in his possession a book which reveals the look of the house where the third Mother can be found. It also contains a red herring "puzzle" which has absolutely no bearing on the film's resolution. Sara uses the book's illustration to find the witches' lair, where she is confronted with a hellish tableau of inhuman torture and murder. She and a police officer who has been following her face the Mother of Tears herself and manage to bring an end to the reign of terror in a rather rushed and perfunctory conclusion.
The story, for all its sturm und drang about the end of the world, is wrapped up much too quickly, and rather unsatisfactorily. The punchline is like a throwback to the Hammer Films days when Dracula would trip and fall to his death just as he was on the verge of victory over his adversaries. While this kind of ending may have been acceptable in a 1960s thriller, it is distinctly unsatisfying in a modern horror film. Honestly, is this the best Argento could come up with in twenty-seven years?
There are some attempts at Argento's usual striking visuals, and the expected elaborately staged murder scenes. But even these look strained and unimaginative. There are also many gruesome references to motherhood and womanhood, but, as usual with Argento, these are without purpose other than as prompts for more shocking visuals.
The film is most pointedly let down by terribly weak performances, particularly from Asia Argento in the lead. It badly needed a much stronger actress to carry the film's absurd premise and preposterous situations. Asia revealed in the Q & A session following the film that she had lobbied her father for the part. So perhaps family politics won out over artistic aspirations.
Argento himself has revealed in an interview that he had not originally envisioned a trilogy until after Suspiria was completed. Perhaps it was a conceit he was mistaken to follow. Despite the director's half-hearted comment that he will miss having the Three Mothers roaming around in his imagination, the film looks more like someone's overdue homework assignment than an obsessive labor of love. Argento seems glad to be done with it.
I echo his sentiment.
Description of Mother of Tears
Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 09/23/2008 Rating: UrAfter waiting 28 years for the third feature in Dario Argento?s Mother trilogy, die-hard fans (like myself) flocked to theaters to catch Mother of Tears. The anticipatory set-up, for example reconciling in advance that the film will look entirely different, and probably less sexy, than the first two Giallo classics, Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), induced anxieties in viewers that many of us hoped would enhance the film?s horror and suspense. So revered are Suspiria and Inferno that one needs an extremely open mind to avoid instantly turning Mother of Tears off, now that it?s available on DVD, and chucking the disc out the window, insulted by its comparison to the previous two movies. From scene one, in which a psychotic, villainous monkey stalks Asia Argento, playing protagonist Sarah Mandy, through Rome?s Natural History Museum, one realizes this film can only go downhill. Without the colored lights, the stylized 1970s horror aesthetic, or the terrifyingly fetishtistic speed metal/electronica soundtrack pounding during the chase, the mood is simply corny. Regarding the monkey, try to remember that an oddly elegant and intelligent crow ate an eyeball to great effect in Argento?s, Terror at the Opera. Argento has always favored animals to represent unwilling witnesses. The plot itself is also typically Argento and does follow-up: After a tainted red tunic is discovered in a cemetery, the third and last witch, Mother Lachrimarum (Moran Atias), is awaken from her catacombs beneath a mansion that she and her two deceased witch consorts, Mater Tenebrarum, the Mother of Darkness/Shadows, and Mater Suspiriorum, the Mother of Sighs, long ago recruited an architect to build. The Mother of Tears has beef with Sarah Mandy, due to Sarah?s heritage, and the unholy black witch relentlessly pursues Mandy until Mandy is forced to fight head-on. Mandy?s boyfriend, Michael Pierce (Adam James), is not much help, nor is Padre Johannes (Udo Kier), which makes sense; Argento?s films are all about empowered female characters, vengeful victims and ruthless criminals alike. Perhaps the flaw here is Argento?s casting of his daughter, and her inability to render that illicit sexual tension that the puerile Suzy Banyon (Jessica Harper) once did in the halls of her bewitched boarding school. Even Mother Lachrimarum?s young recruits, such as the Gothic and Lolita-style Katerina (Jun Ichikawa), are dumb-looking with their colored contacts and peacock hairstyles. There is only one character, the elder white witch Marta Colussi (Valeria Cavalli), who has the sexual draw to enchant Argento style, but she is short-lived. The CG effects employed throughout, especially in regards to the ghoulish antics happening amongst the Goth witch posse, are just plain bad. Only a few shots of gore really spook, and to be fair, they are lasting images. But the only semi-interesting this about the Mother of Tears DVD is the interview extra with the man himself, who is still master even if he makes a few stinkers. --Trinie Dalton
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