Mother of Tears
Reviewed by : TerraBull

Release Year : 2007

AKA : La Terza Madre, The Third Mother

Directed By : Dario Argento

Written By : Dario Argento, Jace Anderson

Starring : Asia Argento, Cristian Solimeno, Moran Atias, Udo Kier

Related Links : IMDB, Youtube Trailer

 

The Third Mother is Argento's latest film, and I'm pleased to say, it's not at all bad!

This is the third and final film in a loosely-threaded trilogy of stories exploring an unholy trinity of powerful witch-spirits ,"The Three Mothers".

Things began with Argento's masterpiece "Suspiria", followed by "Inferno" (which was, in my opinion, not quite up to the same standard). Mother of Tears brings the series to a climax and ties the three together nicely.

Set in the beautiful historic city of Rome, Asia Argento plays Sarah Mandy, the daughter of the American ballerina from Suspiria. Sarah's world becomes entangled with violence and the the occult after an unspeakable power ('Mater Lachrymarum', the 'Mother of Tears' of the title) is released from an ancient artifact found buried in a church-yard. A plague of violence and terror begins to spread and soon threatens the entire city. Can it be stopped? Well, of course, it's the last of the trilogy!

The plot is hardly a masterpiece and is a little uneven, but things pick up when an aging Udo Kier arrives as Padre Joannes to help matters (maters?) along. Kier certainly has much more talent and screen presence than Asia Argento and definately steals the show. It's a pity he didn't get more screen time.

The cinematography is characteristic of an Argento movie, but is a little below par and lacks the saturated colouration and odd camera angles that made Susperia so disturbing, but there are plenty of those dark corners that spill over the screen during the moodier moments. The special effects vary in quality, but the good ones are very good. A couple of situations really make you wince, so let's hope they manage to stay in the movie in all its markets.

But, there are some annoyances. There is rather a long and irritating comic-book sequence to explain some of the history behind the story. This is a bit of a cheap trick to avoid historical sets and expensive special effects. It might have been improved with animation, rather than static sketches, but as the rest of the film is pretty enjoyable, this is (only just) forgivable.

The film has a strong theme of "trinities" and "triplets" running through it that annoying cinema buffs will be counting and quoting to each other too loudly for weeks afterwards. The extras in the background of several shots look like they really don't have a clue what is going on and you can see them straining not to look directly into camera! Finally there is a secret door that requires such a light touch that the aimless wanderings of spiders must have caused the damn thing to spend more time open than closed over the centuries!

To wrap up - Mother of Tears is an enjoyable romp, with a few problems. It's a pity Argento didn't quite manage to hit the dizzying heights of "Suspiria", but it's a satisfying enough title and deserves a watch. 7/10.