Mute Witness', a lost genius that preceded the snuff and slasher that would revolutionize the 90s
Before Alejandro Amenábar revolutionized national cinema with ' Thesis ', before Nicolas Cage descended into hell in 8m and before ' Scream ' put a before and after in slasher and terror , a small European co-production of international cast put all the cards on the table. It was the magnificent ' Mute Witness '.
At the age of 18, this vhs with an unforgettable cover reigned in the video store. We were too young to elevate 'Mute Witness' to the category of classic , but the film written and directed by Anthony Waller can already be described as such. And she was also a pioneer who was ahead of the necrocine craze (much prettier than snuff, where is it going to stop), the new slasher craze and made a neogiallo when the genre had not yet died.
Billy is a successful makeup artist. While in Russia, working on a movie, Billy is locked in the studio one night and attends the filming of a snuff movie in horror . The young woman manages to escape and, with the help of her sister, Kate, alerts the authorities about what she has seen. Unfortunately, in doing so, she becomes the enemy of the film's "producers." Unfortunately for her, the young make-up artist has a helped problem when asking for help: she is mute.
The first third of the film is a ballet, a hilarious symphony of cats and mice, a cinema within a cinema as only the greatest can offer. And by only the biggest ones, I mean De Palma, of course.
But the rest of the film is not wasted thanks to a sense of humor so brilliant that it almost becomes a sense of wonder.
The secret of 'Mute Witness', beyond recreating atmospheres and frames worthy of the cinema of European assassins of the sixties, lies in the constant contrast between cinematographic fiction and the real threat . Waller's film begins within a traditional horror film convention, with a killer stalking and from the killer's point of view. But never, nothing, is what it seems.
From its prodigious start, this fabulous thriller brimming with black humor and knowledge of the codes of a shoot, shows the clash between staging and interpretation, how these elements hardly have anything to do with the result that is then projected in a film. movie screen.
The young woman emerges gracefully from the terrible meeting, but with a very unexpected (and elegant) surprise cameo (achieved thanks to a chance meeting between the director and that actor in Germany years before) the film takes on a new life. The rest of the story shows Billy's efforts to evade further danger, trust (or not) the KGB, and locate a data disc that appears midway in case there was little excitement.
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