Meshing an especially bloody strain of slasher pic with the most whispery of high- art sensibilities, this tale of a young Portuguese- American woman drawn . It’s a line seemingly plucked from a fairy tale, and for all its very adult interlacing of sadism and sensuality, “The Eyes of My Mother” does maintain a child’s- eye view of threat as its protagonist comes of age. Pesce’s heartland Gothic visuals . Though the pic is neatly divided into three chapters . Pesce’s spare script doesn’t seek to obscure, but its quiet, matter- of- fact handling of drastic dramatic events will catch some off- guard. Francisca is introduced as a wide- eyed naif, in thrall to her Portuguese mother (Diana Agostini) as she is taught the legend of Francis of Assissi . This already eerily tainted impression of bucolic childhood takes a significant turn for the worse when a wild- eyed stranger (Will Brill) turns up at the farmhouse and unceremoniously performs a vicious act of violence before the impressionable girl. The film’s ensuing escalation of torture and trauma . It’s fair to say, however, that Francisca grows into a young woman (Portuguese thesp Kika Magalhaes, passively transfixing throughout) with an ingenue’s curiosity regarding the body and pansexual desire, and a brute streak that belies her outward innocence. Pesce ventures into upsetting extremes of human violation and suffering, though there’s enough complex psychological grounding even to the pic’s grisliest setpieces to fend off accusations of exploitation or torture porn. As played with supple, mournful grace by Magalhaes (a former dancer, imbuing the role with a kind of swaying, uncanny physicality), Francisca remains perversely sympathetic even through her most severely inscrutable of actions. In a film that frequently places teasing emphasis on what lies just outside our sphere of knowledge or field of vision, Pesce and his superb d. Haleigh Foutch chats with The Eyes of my Mother director Nicolas Pence about the Fantastic Fest debut of his stunning Hitchcockian horror thriller. The Eyes of My Mother. A young, lonely woman is consumed by her deepest and darkest desires after tragedy strikes her. Sundance Review: 'The Eyes of My Mother' is the Discovery of This Year's Festival.
There are individual frames here, whether of corpses milkily enveloped in a bathtub or blood- smeared fingerprints on a refrigerator door, that hover on the precipice of dreamscape, and may linger in that realm for some viewers long after watching. More than an artsy aesthetic gambit, the deep black- and- white contrasts of Kuperstein’s cinematography serve to suspend Pesce’s narrative in a reality that never seems completely defined. Working toward the same goal are Sam Hensen’s rustic, cleverly era- fudging production design and a soundtrack built on radical sonic reversals: The buzzing synths and rattling winds of Ariel Loh’s alien- electro score segue most disarmingly into a selection of lush Portuguese fado ballads, steering viewers in and out of our anti- heroine’s warped perspective on the horror before her. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (Next), Jan. Executive producers, Antonio Campos, Sean Durkin, Josh Mond, Julie Christeas, Avi Stern. Co- producers, Seth Blogier, Samuel R. Co- executive producer, Adam Kersh. Crew. Directed, written by Nicolas Pesce. Camera (B& W, widescreen), Zach Kuperstein; editors, Connor Sullivan, Pesce; music, Ariel Loh; production designer, Sam Hensen; art director, Caroline Keenan Russell; costume designer, Whitney Anne Adams; sound, Patrick Burgess; supervising sound editor, Michael A. Kurihara; re- recording mixer, Kurihara; visual effects artist, Brian Budak; stunt coordinator, Bobby Burns; associate producer, David Formentin; assistant director, Andreas O'Donahue Villaggio; casting, Stephanie Holbrook. With. Kika Magalhaes, Will Brill, Olivia Bond, Paul Nazak, Clara Wong, Flora Diaz, Diana Agostini. The Eyes of My Mother; Directed by: Nicolas Pesce: Produced by: Max Born Jacob Wasserman Schuyler Weiss: Screenplay by: Nicolas Pesce: Starring: Diana Agostini. The Eyes Of My Mother Film PosterThe Eyes Of My Mother Film
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