A Portuguese made “Giallo Serial Killer Fever Dream” from 2020 that’s similar in tone and conception to the eccentric neo-giallo pastiches of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (such as AMER and THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS), but unique enough to stand on its own. NAME ABOVE TITLE (Um Fio de Baba Escarlate) is 59 minutes long (making it a glorified short), contains little-to-no dialogue (with news reporter voice-overs being all the chatter we get) and consists largely of elaborately choreographed wide shots (with the occasional close-up insert). Writer-director Carlos Conceição (TOMMY GUNS) made his mark with this film, and it may well be remembered as his finest hour.
At a party marked by flashing multicolor lights (a repeated motif) on the upper floor of a big city high rise, a young woman (Joana Ribeiro) climbs onto the railing and leaps to her death. Cut to a man, identified as Candide (Matthieu Charneau), and another young woman (Joana Ribeiro, again) making out in a car amid a fireworks display, during which he strangles her to death. He then drives back to his home, just in time to witness the jumping woman hit the ground—to which he responds by giving the dying beauty a passionate kiss on the lips.
This makes Candide a social media star, but it doesn’t curb his murderous proclivities. At a gas station he picks up a hot chick (Joana Ribeiro, yet again) he aims to kill, but the plan is interrupted by an especially nosey paparazzi (João Arrais) who upon confronting Candide in a secluded thicket becomes another of his victims. This marks the beginning of Candide’s decline, with the public turning on him and he, in a near-death state, getting taken in by some randy nuns who mistake him for a Divine Being.
All this feels very artificial, although that appears to have been the whole point. Conceição’s aping of giallo conventions (specifically those of Dario Argento), evident in the ultra-garish lighting, quasi-Agatha Christie narrative (albeit with the question of whodunit never in doubt) and graphic carnage, is well carried off (all that’s missing are the Argento-patented gloved hand close-ups), with staging and camerawork that are uniformly impeccable. If nothing else, Conceição provides a superlative example of visual storytelling.
The generic English language pop tunes littering the soundtrack could have stood to be toned down, if not jettisoned entirely. The determinedly Goblin-centric score by Hugo Leitão, dominated by overwrought Goblin-esque whirring and twanging, provides much better aural accompaniment to a film that’s not quite the modern reinvention of the giallo formula (as the Cattet-Forzani films can be said to be) that was promised, but which works just fine as a darkly knowing pasta-fueled romp.
Vital Statistics
NAME ABOVE TITLE (Um Fio de Baba Escarlate)
Mirabilis
Director/Screenplay: Carlos Conceição
Producers: Carlos Conceição, António Gonçalves
Cinematography: Vasco Viana
Editing: António Gonçalves, Carlos Conceição
Cast: Matthieu Charnaeau, Joana Ribeiro, Leonor Silveira, João Arrais, Teresa Madruga