Italian actress Asia Argento has been a darling of movie cultists for more than a decade. With her black eyes, her pout, and a magnificent body which she employs very directly onscreen, she's graced both Italian exploitation films and done some very creditable work in serious cinema. You may remember her from La Rene Margot, for example, Patrice Chereau's operatic exploration of the Hugenaut massacres. You probably won't have seen some of her early films, such as Michele Placido's L'Amiche del Cuor.
But Argento comes from a family with a program. Her father Dario made a singular reputation as the inventor of a new genre of serious horror films such as Suspiria, and Deep Red. Her mother, Daria Nicolodi, who raised her, is both actress and screenwriter. And when she was sixteen, Asia was writing novels. She wandered into cinema via her mother, and was later cast by her father in films she prefers to forget.
But she's also been breaking out of the sexually exploitative roles into writing and directing herself. And this year at Cannes she made a considerable splash as an actress with break-out performances in Catherine Breillat's An Old Mistress , in Tony Gatliff's latest gypsy film, Transylvania, and in new films from Abel Ferrara and Olivier Assayas.
All these films are screening in a season on the work of Asia Argento at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne starting next weekend. As well, there are key films in which Asia starred, including Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel, a fascinating if ultimately imploding attempt to adapt a William H Gibson short story. Also screening are two of the films Asia has directed: an early Felliniesque romp called Scarlet Diva, and a much tougher film called The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, a memoir of a dreadfully abused childhood, based on the short story by JT Leroy, who, we now know, is a fraud. An extraordinary story in itself. But then, I discovered, Asia Argento works from the heart.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/movietime/stories/2007/2103619.htm
But Argento comes from a family with a program. Her father Dario made a singular reputation as the inventor of a new genre of serious horror films such as Suspiria, and Deep Red. Her mother, Daria Nicolodi, who raised her, is both actress and screenwriter. And when she was sixteen, Asia was writing novels. She wandered into cinema via her mother, and was later cast by her father in films she prefers to forget.
But she's also been breaking out of the sexually exploitative roles into writing and directing herself. And this year at Cannes she made a considerable splash as an actress with break-out performances in Catherine Breillat's An Old Mistress , in Tony Gatliff's latest gypsy film, Transylvania, and in new films from Abel Ferrara and Olivier Assayas.
All these films are screening in a season on the work of Asia Argento at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne starting next weekend. As well, there are key films in which Asia starred, including Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel, a fascinating if ultimately imploding attempt to adapt a William H Gibson short story. Also screening are two of the films Asia has directed: an early Felliniesque romp called Scarlet Diva, and a much tougher film called The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, a memoir of a dreadfully abused childhood, based on the short story by JT Leroy, who, we now know, is a fraud. An extraordinary story in itself. But then, I discovered, Asia Argento works from the heart.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/movietime/stories/2007/2103619.htm
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