Sitges Is Back & Bloodier Than Ever
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
SITGES, Spain — Zombies of every stripe, French neo-Nazi cannibals, sukiyaki gunslingers, and … Woody Allen? Either every film makes a strange bedfellow or none of them do at Sitges 2007. More officially known as the Festival Internacional de Cinema de Catalunya, the sprawling 11-day cinema marathon celebrates every mutant variation in the catch-all genre known as fantastic cinema. “Europeans are not snobbish about this stuff,” Stuart Gordon, the American director who first achieved cult status with his giddy, gross-out 1980s adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft stories “Re-Animator” and “From Beyond,” said. Mr. Gordon is back at the resort village on the Balearic Coast for the fourth time, as the festival mounts his latest low-budget shocker, “Stuck.” The film, based on a true story, ponders the existential dilemma of a homeless man (Stephen Rea) who finds himself wedged in a car windshield after a nurse (Mena Suvari) recklessly smacks into him and hides vehicle and victim in her garage.
“Sitges is the Olympics of horror movies,” Mr. Gordon said. He was sitting in the lobby bar of the Hotel Melia, the hilltop headquarters for the festival, and his bold, Hawaiian-style shirt was ideal for the palm trees and pool nearby. “The first time I came here I was on the prize jury, and two of the films in competition were Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and Peter Jackson’s ‘Brain Dead.’ And I got to meet both of those guys. It really brings filmmakers together, and you get to see films you’d never see anywhere else.”
The festival, which marks its 40th anniversary this week, boasts plenty of marquee and art-house appeal. An American visitor could catch an early glimpse of new work from Olivier Assayas, Park Chan-wook, Brian DePalma, Johnny To, Harmony Korine, and Mr. Allen, whose “Cassandra’s Dream” seemed a typically atypical selection. But it really revels in screening arcana from every corner of the celluloid planet, whether it’s 1980s softcore-porn about Christ-obsessed Filipino lesbians or a retrospective devoted to the drive-in mayhem of director Enzo Castellari. Mr. Castellari, a former boxer with the build and bearing of an Italian Popeye, has long been a favorite of Mr. Tarantino, who is remaking his World War II epic “Inglorious Bastards.”
Mr. Tarantino has a cameo in Takashi Miike’s “Sukiyaki Western Django,” a crowd-pleasing otaku take-off on Sergio Leone, while his “Grindhouse” got a fancy southern European launch here, represented by the lively New Zealand stuntwoman-turned-actress Zoe Bell. Rather than any specific detail, though, what makes the festival unique is the way it unabashedly fetishizes the same kind of genre obsession that drives filmmakers like Mr. Tarantino.
“Something that North American fans and even filmmakers don’t know is that there is a huge science-fiction and fantasy film circuit,” Colin Geddes, the international programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, said. “And on that circuit, Sitges is considered the equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival. Just the fact that it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary is proof of it.”
So far, there are only two like-minded events in North America: Montreal’s FantAsia and Austin, Texas’s Fantastic Fest, both of which have programmers here scouting new fare — as are critics, studio deal-makers, and enthusiastic fans for whom Sitges is a yearly pilgrimage.
First-time directors such as Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo were eager to meet them. The French duo collaborated on “A L’Interieur” (“Inside”), a novel, stomach-churning twist on the stalker theme whose visceral denouement made it one of the most-talked about films all week. In one such casual discussion, a British journalist dismissed it as simply too much to sit through amid the festival’s cyclical surplus of post-“Hostel” torture flicks. True, some scenes are almost impossible to watch. Yet, that is as much due to the skillful execution and psychological shadings of the scenario as mere carnage. “It was really important for us to try to obtain feelings from the audience and not just do a roller coaster of emotions,” Mr. Maury said.
The filmmakers cast Beatrice Dalle, still crazy after all these years since 1986’s “Betty Blue,” as a mysterious woman who menaces a young photojournalist about to give birth several months after a car accident that killed her husband. The premise is primal, and quickly becomes more so, even as unexpected sympathies arise for Ms. Dalle’s demonic figure.
“She is not just a boogie woman,” Mr. Maury said. “She is a woman who has been broken by life.”
Originally, Mr. Bustillo, a former critic for the French film magazine Mad Movies, had thought to have the expectant mother (Alysson Paradis) pursued by a placenta-devouring male villain, having imagined the fears experienced by an expectant friend. But that was too easy. “This movie is not an ordinary slasher flick,” he said.
“À L’Intérieur,” which has been picked up by the Weinstein Company for a straight-to-DVD release in America, deserves to be seen in a full theater, where the proof of Mr. Bustillo’s statement can be felt as moviegoers squirm in their seats. It’s that extreme. Given the gallons of plasma that gush across the screen, the directors were asked for a trade secret. Your recipe for the blood?
“Oh,” Mr. Maury said, “we used our own.”
He paused for a second, disarmingly, to gauge a reaction. Then he offered up the secret formula. A few yards away, Robert Englund, the once-and-forever Freddy Krueger, strolled through the afternoon sun, attended by camera crews befitting Lindsay Lohan. It was just another day in Sitges.