DVD Review: Dario Argento’s Trauma on Anchor Bay Entertainment

Heads off to Anchor Bay for this surprisingly meaty DVD edition of Trauma.

TraumaDario Argento’s Trauma was his first full-length American production. A bizarre, psychologically repressive thriller that smacks of lesser De Palma, the film, like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Deep Red, questions the authenticity of its protagonist’s sightline when Aura (Asia Argento), an anorexic junkie, witnesses the decapitation of her parents after having escaped from a local clinic. Trauma is both an underachieving Deep Red and an unpolished facsimile of Stendhal Syndrome, and where Tenebre invites active spectatorship, Trauma is convoluted to the point of distraction, worth savoring solely for Argento’s excesses of gore.

The film opens with a female African-American chiropractor’s decapitation. A young insect-loving boy, Gabriel (Cory Garvin), crawls into the killer’s house (not the chiropractor’s—yes, the opening scenes are confusing) after one of the killer’s lizards munches on a rare butterfly. In the film’s greatest sequence, the boy discovers the killer’s instrument of death (a sawing machine with a wire attachment), almost uses it on himself, and accidentally squeezes the lizard to death when the killer comes home. Though he narrowly escapes, the boy has already developed an attachment to the murderer’s house. The night before, George notices a black woman staring down at him from one of the windows. Argento places Gabriel and the spectator in the same shoes, showcasing his signature talent for summoning hazy shades of confusion. No, this isn’t the home of the chiropractor. What Gabriel is looking at is the woman’s decapitated head!

Aura flees a local clinic, bumps into the film’s dapper male hero, David (Christopher Rydell), and shows him her war wounds (here, track marks on her arms). David discusses his own history with drugs and they seemingly bond. After stealing David’s wallet, Aura is apprehended by a pair of aggressive social workers and is taken back to the home of her mother, Adriana (Piper Laurie). Locked inside her room, Aura overhears her mother conducting a séance with a bunch of creepy houseguests. The loony acting and busy soundtrack composed of overlapping voices highlights the scene. Adriana conjures up a ghost named Nicolas, whose relationship to the woman won’t be revealed until film’s end. Windows shatter, guests panic, and Aura (from her second-floor bedroom window) witnesses her parents running into the woods behind their home. She climbs down to the ground only to stumble across the headless corpse of her mother. The film’s faceless Headhunter killer stands in the distance, holding the heads of her parents. The film is on.

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Argento undervalues David’s job as an art director for a local news station. The man’s fondness for art is ripe with moral discourse—he’s in charge of sketching the Headhunter for news coverage of the serial killer’s crimes. The station’s correspondent happens to be David’s girlfriend, a dumb blonde whose only significant contribution to the narrative is to provide self-reflexive commentary on her boy-toy’s graphic doodles: “Keep it tasteful!” Equally sketchy is the story’s kooky, beside-the-point treatment of anorexia: David’s co-worker goes on about the disorder when Aura’s sanity comes up, and Argento, in turn, acknowledges David’s concerns via a campy sequence that seemingly resembles a Paxil commercial. David drives through a city street populated by overly thin girls and prostitutes, and in ridiculous voiceover, he mumbles: “A lot of anorexics die. There’s something like eight million of them out there. Deeply attached to an unstable mother, she’ll dream her father is leaning over her about to kiss her.” This is Argento trying desperately to bring Freud into the equation. But the elegance of the imagery and editing is unmistakable Argento, like the fascinating cut to a scene where Dr. Judd (Frederic Forrest), Anna’s psychiatrist and father figure, leans over the girl’s fragile frame, forcibly feeding her a bunch of psychotropic berries. It’s amazing she’s able to keep them down.

After Dr. Judd’s death, Aura leaves behind a suicide note that sends David into a downward spiral. It is here that Argento conjures themes from his upcoming Stendhal Syndrome. David’s drug-induced stupor outside a gallery evokes his overwhelming sense of loss and feelings for Aura. While staring at a print of John Everett Millais’s “Ophelia” (which depicts the suicide of Hamlet’s girlfriend), David seemingly stumbles across a clue. Though his eyes are blurry from crying, he thinks he sees Aura on the street. What he really sees is a black-clothed stranger sporting the girl’s snaky bracelet. This remarkable sequence calls attention to the relationship between art and reality. Korean director Chang Youn-hyun would take this theme, Millais’s painting, and other elements from Trauma to the max in his delirious Tell Me Something.

On American turf, Argento’s distinctly European sensibility seems out of place (see the fairy tale nature of the Gabriel scenes) but certainly not without its charm. At one point, Argento’s camera makes a 360-degree turn as it approaches the doorway of Aura’s home. It’s a pointless stylistic maneuver, Argento’s desperate attempt at giving Trauma a sense of structural coherence. Without Poe as claustrophobic leverage, Argento spiritlessly freewheels his way through the film’s events. Unlike The Black Cat, Trauma is constantly fighting to negotiate Argento’s baroque direction. Needlessly convoluted, yes, but batty sometimes in a good way: For sure, it’s worth taking in for its spectacular decapitation sequences and rigorous attention to detail. Not to mention Laurie’s campy performance.

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Image/Sound

Some compression pixel breakups are evident on the edges of objects, most especially during the scene where Asia Argento’s character tries to jump off a bridge, and edge enhancement is a problem early on, but this is a surprisingly clean image considering that Trauma’s negative was probably rotting away in some vault for the last 12 years. (A scene late in the film, in which Piper Laurie’s character tries to break into a closet where the insect-loving child resides, is a stunning spectacle of contrasting hues.) Two audio tracks are available, but you’ll want to opt for the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track as it really pulls the non-stop rain in the film across the entire soundstage.

Extras

Alan Jones, a fan and friend of Argento since the shooting of Tenebre, wrote a book on the director earlier this year titled Profondo Argento: The Man, The Myths and The Magic which I haven’t read but likely unravels the same way as Jones’s commentary track here. Maitland McDonagh, author of Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, would have provided a stunning critical perspective on the film. Jones seems scarcely concerned with studying the film, instead choosing to relate endless behind-the-scenes information and other assorted historical tidbits: Bridget Fonda’s early involvement in the film, Asia’s relationship to her deceased anorexic half-sister Anna, how Argento was inspired by The Spiral Staircase, how much of a hard-on everyone had for Piper Laurie, and so on. None of it is in the least boring but the lack of critical insight is surprising. Rounding out the remaining supplemental materials is a terrific featurette titled “Love, Death & Trauma” that allows Argento to take center stage and talk about the film for nearly 20 minutes, some awesome video footage of Tom Savini’s work on the film, five minutes of deleted scenes, a poster and still gallery, an original theatrical trailer, an Argento bio, and trailers for other DVDs courtesy of Anchor Bay: Suspiria, Opera, The Card Player, Deep Red, and Dawn of the Dead.

Overall

Heads off to Anchor Bay for this surprisingly meaty DVD edition of Trauma.

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Score: 
 Cast: Asia Argento, Christopher Rydell, Piper Laurie, Frederic Forrest, Laura Johnson, Dominique Serrand, James Russo, Brad Dourif  Director: Dario Argento  Screenwriter: Dario Argento, T.E.D. Klein  Distributor: Anchor Bay Entertainment  Running Time: 106 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1993  Release Date: August 23, 2005  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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