Reaction Shots

  I was not predisposed to like this film. I am a huge fan of the source material, Carlos Fuentes’ novella “Aura” and I made the mistake of reading reviews that were less than appreciative. To be sure, there are of necessity, differences in the authorial voices. The plot is easily recounted: Sergio Logan, scholar/lady’s man, is led to accept a position for Consuelo, a wealthy widow, to bring order to her late husband’s library and ready his memoirs for publication. Our scholar demurs and is ready to brush off the old lady, until he meets her daughter Aura. In short order, things get weird. Sergio’s predecessor, Fabrizio, appears on the scene, our scholar is possessed of jealousy and after a while – days – he accidentally kills the librarian. Mother and daughter impress on the scholar to dispose of the body and blackmail him into staying. Beyond this point, it becomes clear that the daughter is not the old woman’s daughter, but an emanation of the old woman’s will, conjured by some

  Before we get too far along down this road, I want to reflect on some elements of horror film as a genre and some of the ramifications of those elements. Critical theory and textual analysis in the service of reviewing pop culture seems to strike people as overkill. “It’s just a movie!” Sure, but by dismissing out of hand the work of dozens (if not, thousands) and the investments, costs, and returns of a collaborative work of any magnitude reveals more about the dismissal than the work itself. It also speaks to how little attention we pay to the very pop culture we consume on a regular basis, from movies to sport to music. I didn’t apply any great amount of analysis to “Mad Love” simply because, despite its being a study in psychological deterioration and rife with some pretty interesting examples of deviance and queer theory, it has at its heart, that most indefinable element: fun. Seriously. “Fun” may not be the first word that comes to mind when we think of “horror”, but a

                                            It has become an annual tradition of mine to plunder the treasure stores of films that are, more or less, loosely or strictly, categorized under the rubric of “horror”. The definition is probably looser than some would like, but the baseline is some degree of unease, the macabre, and seasoned optionally with a monster type critter. My pal Tim Kozlowski draws a line at films like “Silence of the Lambs” which does wind up on horror film lists, and which I actually do understand, but I’m not sure I can fully support, either. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s not preposterous enough, too damned good a film (not that there aren’t great, genre-transcending examples), or too multivalent that it can’t be simply stuffed into the “horror film” box. That said, I would be more inclined to assign the Ridley Scott sequel “Hannibal” to the checklist since it’s more single-minded in its approach and execution (it has much more in common with Dario Argento