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Paolo Strippoli's 'The Spiral' Takes Center Stage at Venice Film Festival
Confirmed
In Short: Paolo Strippoli's horror-thriller 'The Spiral' competes at the Venice Film Festival, offering a grand guignol morality play that, despite its unsubtle approach, resonates with universal themes.
Paolo Strippoli's 'The Spiral' has made a splash at the Venice Film Festival, competing in the main lineup rather than a sidebar, a move that has raised eyebrows among critics. The film, described as a mix of 'The Great Beauty' and Saki's 'The Monkey's Paw,' is a loud and unsubtle horror-thriller that Strippoli hopes will secure his status as a horror auteur.
Set in a hospital chapel, the film introduces Anna, played by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, who receives unsettling news about her daughter Alice. The narrative is structured around a series of spirals, both visual and thematic, which critics find cool and unnerving but ultimately unfulfilling. 'The Spiral' is a morality play that, while not lecturing viewers about the state of the world, does remind them of the potential consequences of their actions.
Despite its commercial appeal, 'The Spiral' faces criticism for its belabored flashback structure and a lack of moral or spiritual resonance. Anna's secret, revealed early in the film, fails to build significant tension or emotional weight, leaving the film's narrative engine to rely on Strippoli's 'enjoyably vulgar' aesthetic. Critics note that the film's visual style is stylish but hokum, failing to match the complexity of Strippoli's previous work, 'The Holy Boy.
While some may question the film's place in the main competition, 'The Spiral' is a bold and unsubtle piece of work that, in its own way, delivers a grand guignol morality play. Its visual and thematic elements, while not leading anywhere in particular, offer a unique and unsettling experience that resonates with universal themes.
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- But instead of lecturing us about the parlous state of the world today, Strippoli is happy to give us a grand guignol morality play that tells us not so much that we’re doomed but reminds us that it’s the things that we might yet do that may throw our lives off-track.
- There will be people wondering why Paolo Strippoli’s unashamedly commercial horror-thriller The Spiral is in Competition and not in one of the festival’s many increasingly hard-to-navigate sidebars.
- While praying in what should be a simple hospital chapel but seemingly designed with more than half an eye on Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, Anna is met by a stranger ( Valeria Bruni Tedeschi ), who updates her on Alice’s condition: She is about to lose a leg, and that, she intimates, is the best-case scenario, since the surgeons in charge are inexperienced.
- Outside the window, a none-too-encouraging cyclone is forming in the clouds: the first of several spirals in the film’s image system, which, like many passing details in “The Spiral,” look cool and unnerving without leading anywhere in particular.
- “The Spiral” arrives hot on the heels of Strippoli’s third feature “The Holy Boy,” a wickedly clever, creepy tale of small-town trauma, terror and faith that was a standout of Venice’s out-of-competition sidebar a year ago, and is an altogether more layered, probing and frankly frightening film than this one.
- Perhaps this year’s selection is the festival’s mea culpa ; perhaps the star presence of veteran Euro-arthouse queen Bruni Tedeschi makes all the difference.
- Either way, this stylish hokum secures Strippoli’s claim to horror-auteur status, and should see him cross over into the international elevated-genre market.