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Alejandro Amenabar is the new brains of the fantasy film,and maybe of the European cinema.Take the snuff movie topic :he did much better than Shumacher's "8 mm".Now he takes an hackneyed subject which has been treated many times and surprises the audience. Combining Georges Franju 's "les yeux sans visage" (1960)-for the strange poetry which emanates from the mask the hero(heroine in the French movie) wears-,Adrian Lyne's "Jacob's ladder" and what will be LATER developed in "matrix" or "the sixth sense" ,Amenabar creates a disturbing,absorbing and mesmerizing movie.He succeeds in surprising the audience the way only Alfred Hitchcock could do before:the movie begins as some kind of two-bit comedy,with such futile subjects as trying and picking someone up and parties,then slowly but inexorably grips the audience's mind ,and the interest won't weaken till the very end.Like in "psycho" or "Rosemary's baby" or "Jacob's ladder" ,nothing should be revealed.For the French,there's another surprise:Serge Duvernois is played by Gérard Barray.This actor was very famous in the sixties for playing in swashbucklers the likes of "Pardaillan" "Surcouf" and "les trois mousquetaires".He was some kind of Jean Marais's alter ego.Then he completely disappeared from the screens in the late sixties(he probably became a stage actor).So I had not seen him for thirty years or more!Seeing him in such a spooky part adds to the eerie atmosphere.I wish the French directors could think of him a little more now.
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