Suspiria

Luca Guadagnino’s version divides itself on screen: six acts and an epilogue in divided Berlin. The chapter cards mean the dread does not climb steadily; it stops and restarts. The academy interiors were not shot in Berlin but at the shuttered Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori in Varese; Berlin supplied exteriors only. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom shot on 35mm and the palette was left to browns, greens and blues. Guadagnino refused the primary colour logic of Dario Argento’s 1977 film, arguing everything sayable in that style had been said. Tilda Swinton plays three parts, and the elderly psychoanalyst was credited to an invented actor called Lutz Ebersdorf; she confirmed it only after the premiere. Damien Jalet built the choreography, Dakota Johnson trained in dance for about a year, and the music is Thom Yorke’s first film score. Dancing here is cause rather than decoration: a movement in one rehearsal room is shown working on a body in another. The film competed at the 75th Venice Film Festival and left with nothing. A good fit if you want the fear to come from choreography and cutting instead of colour, and can live with a structure broken into announced acts. Not for anyone after the saturated reds and pace of the 1977 film; this version drops exactly those.