Her Private Hell : confusing but make it giallo.
there are many types of giallo movies throughout the cinema history : there is mario bava giallo, dario argento giallo and then there is NWR giallo. not to forget to mention that giallo term comes from ”gialli” which means “yellow” in Italian, comes from 1929 publishing series by Mondadori that featured cheap pulp crime and mystery novels with distinctive yellow covers. Mario Bava actually came up first with this new genre with his films The Girl Who Knew Too Much from 1963 and Blood and Black Lace in 1964 ( around that time in the United Kingdom a movie also called ” Her Private hell ” would be made then expressing the topic of sexploitation and fashion). influenced later many directors in the 70s-80s to come up with their type of narratives, I think now of Brian de Palma films, Ulli Lommel, Sergio Martino, Lamberto Bava to name a few. but when it comes to NWR approach in giallo it felt to me more like a replica of Mario Bava film ” Blood and Black Lace ” from 1964 or just a mixture of his different favourite films which didn’t felt inspiring & exciting as many wanted (including me*).
in one of his interviews, NWR mentioned that he got inspired & wanted to give an homage to Dario Argento films which I found pretty weird cause if you know a bit of Argento films and also the directors I mentioned before you will get to the clear idea nothing reasambles what Dario Argento achieved throughout his films visually & narratively speaking. it feels more like an homage to Mario Bava films instead only by looking at the ads shown here for promoting ”Her Private Hell”. I will come up later throughout this essay about this issue but first the set design debate as always.
after hearing last year in spring it will be inspired by the film with the same name from 1968, I was so curious & excited to see NWR signature on this (after seeing many of his movies, pleased with the sense of realism of the plot / characters he uses combined with the fantasy like way of lighting & shots as we see in Drive and Neon Demon). not gonna lie, as always, the set design is somehow interesting constructed, lots of contrasts of colours, shades of gold, red & blue, certain play of lights & shadows to give chiaroscuro effects to the characters which kinda loved it & made me watch to the end.
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throught the film ”Her Private Hell” ( as I was standing in the cinema, almost empty but nice I was the only one to watch it* ) I spot on two predominant architectural styles: Retro-Futurism and Art Deco in certain places / shots , especially at the ”Private Hotel”. it reminds somehow of ”Metropolis ” film by Fritz Lang the idea of future world with very tall buildings and in this case the palette of colours is warm : gold, red, beige, different kinds of velvet & vintage wallpapers there (at Elle apartment even felt some Fassbinder films vibes*), at some moments we are transported to the 60s influence through the use of silver and mirrors, cold tones of blue and turquoise, Paco Rabanne fashion & space age era. and Planet of the vampires ! (or perhaps to ”2001: space odyssey” by Kubrick). either way, we are transported fast forward to the set of the film called ” Candy Floss ” where Elle and her friends are acting. in this case we find the influence from retro-futurism and space age at its peak ( in a cheesy manner* ). but in general, throughout the film its the same interiors design approach just like in thriller movies from the 70s / giallo films.
when it comes to the light design, we observe now the influence from the ”Suspiria” film by Dario Argento at the last 30 min of the film, not much during the movie. in general in the film, they were just warm lights used but soft to enhance more the mystery / idea of the mist as a central character of the film ( as I said earlier, chiaroscuro effect its on point here whenever Private K appears on screen ). ”It’s what the mist brings.”
about Private K mission & story, I found particular interesting through the use of lights, mist & set design the possible reference to Hades, the god of the dead & darkness, king of the underworld, which we can depict a lot from Private K character. many say its about Orpheus but no, its not the case here. “To catch a ghost you must become a ghost” they said, plus the ”born to lose” lighter shown in the movie. Orpheus is the figure that we see in greek mythology and in Jean Cocteau film from 1950. a musician, prophet and poet. someone who would go to hell/ underworld to save the loved one Eurydice. that his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone, who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper world ( as soon as he had reached the upper world, he immediately turned to look at her, forgetting in his eagerness that both of them needed to be in the upper world for the condition to be met. because of that, she vanished for the second time, this time forever ). this narrative we won’t find it here unfortunately. instead, we see through Private K possibly someone who becomes Hades himself cause of his turmoil, anger, vice, illusion and sadness over his daughter loss & obsession over the Leatherman. it transports us the viewers more to the idea of going to the underworld / Hell and facing it rather to the idea of looking for the loved one & sacrifice as in Orpheus story. we can relate somehow to ”Inferno” by Dante Alighieri where the main character travels the many circles of Hell.
now knowing these & seeing that from the cinema as I was watching the film, I couldn't help myself check the letterboxd reviews for the movie. guess it reminded more of other films than I expected. ”Barbarella” from the 60s, ”Blade Runner” from 80s, ”Megalopolis” by Francis Ford Coppola, ”the Neon Demon” or ”Only God forgives” that NWR made at least 10 years ago. ”Viddy well” as Alex DeLarge from Clockwork Orange would say. But because of many inspirations from other movies expressed here with the little help of NWR script ( made from 3 total different ideas of plot ), it felt somehow to me a bit empty or without any substance, lacking a certain thrill that always we want from a movie in general, especially from giallo or thriller erotic as NWR promised through the description & advertising of ”Her Private Hell ”. ”Visually striking but emotionally distant” as someone said on letterboxd. In Romania, they even give gift boxes from Davidoff for every person who buys a ticket to this film but unfortunately there are still people that won’t understand yet the vision or fantasy NWR wanted to bring on screen. In the end, I gave it only 2 stars on letterboxd cause of the idea of inspiration from the movies I mentioned earlier, movies I personally like ( maybe through that NWR will bring cinema alive as he said at Cannes premiere, fair enough) and because of the plot ( Charles Melton ).
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