aka THE CARD PLAYER (2003) 106 mins MEDUSA ; ITALY

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PROFONDO CYBERSPACE! Il Cartaio/The Card Player is going to test Dario Argento’s fan base like no other thriller in his giallo back catalogue. For, in a concerted effort to broaden his mainstream appeal, the Italian maestro has directed his most atypical and generic serial killer study ever. With little of the usual Argento flair or style on show (Benoit Debie’s deliberately dreary photography his accomplice) and devoid of blood with all the violence taking place off-camera, he takes the biggest risk in his career to date – especially after the well-received Nonhosonno. It clearly isn’t enough for him to merely use his signature device of always taking the place of the murderers’ black-gloved hands. Now he has totally allied his personality to the central mysterious assassin confronting police in a series of Internet poker games for the lives of three innocent female victims.

A psychological profiler helping the baffled Roman force says at one point that the elusive executioner sees the live Webcam slaughter gambles in terms of the heart-stopping thrill enjoyed by bungee jumpers. One can only trust Argento’s rope is strong enough to plunge past the dashed hopes of his admirers and can bounce back through strong box-office and home critical support. Opening Italy January 2, 2004, on a 220 print wide release, The Card Player has two weeks to prove itself before producers Medusa Film replace it with another returning king - The Lord of the Rings – on any under-performing screens. How well it does will have a major impact on the future financing of La Terza Madre/The Third Mother.

At the first press show for Italian journalists on December 29, 2003, at the Cinema Fiamma near the Via Veneto, some of The Card Player’s trite dialogue (mainly related to Silvio Muccino’s character Remo, the video whiz-kid brought in by police to beat the maniac at his own game) was greeted with gales of derisive laughter. At an evening screening for newspaper critics the same day at the International Recording studios, 172 Via Urbana, the reception was far more respectful. By popular consensus, those seeing the movie for the second time (myself included) all thought it improved with a repeat viewing and changed their initial downbeat opinion to a far more positive one. I mean, even a decidedly average film by Dario Argento is more interesting than most offerings from other name directors. Right? The treasures and delights are there, you just have to take another chance and dig deep to uncover them - because taking chances is what The Card Player is thematically all about.

Beginning like an episode of some CSI Euro police procedural offshoot (CSI: Rome, now there’s an idea!) and ending on a frantic Perils of Pauline note complete with silent movie OTT villainy, policewoman Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) is forced to team up with disgraced Irish cop John Brennan (Liam Cunningham) sidelined from London when The Card Player murders an English tourist. Haunted by personal demons regarding her late gambling addicted father, Anna falls for the troubled Brennan as they attempt to trap the cyber criminal and uncover his identity and motive.

Rocca and Cunningham effectively use their sketchy characterisation to build a believable relationship and their sensitive screen chemistry is one of the movie’s best aspects. Filmed in unforgiving harsh lighting, Rocca’s face really does take on an overly emotional and exhausted patina as the clues, red herrings and puzzling events mount up at Polizia Central.

Those always engaging events skirt a whole range of differing feelings Argento followers are well used to by now. There’s farce with a tap-dancing, opera-singing morgue attendant. There’s unintentional comedy when the police organise a cheese and wine party to celebrate the release of their chief’s daughter Lucia (Fiore Argento) from the maniac’s clutches thanks to Remo’s card-playing talent. There’s well-oiled suspense generated by such simple editing techniques as cutting between the fuzzy Webcam screams of the third victim (Vera Gemma) and her actual escape attempt in the killer’s remote lair. There’s the flat tension of Remo’s hook murder in the River Tiber and the thrown-away booby-trap death of one of the lead characters.

And there’s the missed climactic opportunity of ending on a bravura Cat O’Nine Tails-type elevator shaft moment with the assassin’s body rolling under a moving train. The murderer can really be only one of three obvious suspects and if you pay close enough attention to the very opening shot, you’ll quickly guess who despite Argento’s time-shift disguise efforts. The murderer’s heartsick schizophrenia is mirrored further by the artful concept of contrasting old tourist Rome with its modern day alter ego and how they clash in a working city environment. The identity of the murderer registers a lot more resonance with Italian audiences too because the actor playing the part is well known for always playing the heroic lead and never a villain – until now. While I didn’t mind Claudio Simonetti’s pulsating Eurovision nightclub score (more effective in the first half of the film than the second), I think many will applaud the moment Anna shoots a car radio to bits in order to switch it off! However it’s the complete lack of bloody shocks that will place The Card Player near the bottom of the fans’ favourites (it is better than The Stendhal Syndrome). Each time you think Argento’s camera is moving in for the full-frontal kill he annoyingly cuts away from the abductions and throat slitting. In some instances he even places an out-of-focus object or someone’s head in front of the action to deliberately obscure it. The two scenes that are supposed to cause a forensic fear frenzy – Brennan finding an exotic plant seed in the first victim’s nostril (after a Joker card has been pulled from her vagina) and being covered in bile thanks to an after-death stomach spasm by the second’s victim’s corpse – are completely ruined by Sergio Stivaletti’s dodgy dummy nude body prosthetics. From the cadavers’ rubbery faces and creased pelvises to their nylon pubic hair, they couldn’t look faker or more laughable in realistic context. Their sheer awfulness only makes you appreciate more Tom Savini’s artistry in Argento’s ‘Pit and the Pendulum’ Two Evil Eyes homage.

But there is one gloriously wonderful set piece in the time-honoured Argento tradition that makes The Card Player’s inconsistencies and awkwardness nearly all worthwhile. For Italian audiences, who usually have their movies divided into two for concession stand and cigarette break reasons, it occurs straight after the ‘Seconda Parte’ title. It revolves around Anna relaxing at her apartment after a night of lovemaking with Brennan. An odd reflection in a spherical glass ashtray on her coffee table catches her eye and on further investigation, as she studies the distorted image with a magnifying glass, she realises it’s the hooded face of the killer waiting in her garden bushes to break and enter.

A cat-and-mouse chase through the apartment shot from overhead then takes place full of pulse-pounding incident and clever sleight-of-hand misdirection. (Trivia note: the man who photographs the severed fingers found in Anna’s bag is Franco Vitale, Argento’s favourite unit photographer who has shot the publicity stills for every movie). It’s a truly classic Argento-esque episode, a subtle variation on the mirror/picture frisson from Deep Red, and was devised by the director only a week before he shot it.

In fact, much of the script was improvised by the actors with Argento’s blessing, Cunningham singing ‘Danny Boy’ drunk by the Pantheon is a prime example, and that goes a long way in explaining the overly fractured feel of the end result. It also clarifies the quite ludicrous climax that finds Anna and her stalker handcuffed to a railway line playing one last high stakes poker game. Invented by Argento when he axed the original car driving into on-coming traffic ending, it has the faint feel of a desperate search for cinematic irony more than a satisfying conclusion to an unsatisfying whole It’s almost as if Argento is saying, Here we are in the 21st century capable of carrying out murder via new technology, yet we’re still stuck with the same old early 20th century dog-eared clichés.

The over-baked ending, complete with ‘one month later’ final heart-warming twist before the credits roll over Anna’s face, means The Card Player swaps any serious Fritz Lang inspiration for a more crowd-pleasing Pearl White serial cliff-hanger one. During the press conference following the first screening, a journalist asked Argento if he had been influenced by Michelangelo (Blow-Up/Zabriskie Point) Antonioni’s use of realism in any way. Argento remarked that he hadn’t and couldn’t see any firm analogy. Yet there is a clear connection between The Card Player and classic Antonioni in the way it marks a bleaker, more meanderingly conventional approach to its disaffected twist of fate subject matter. Argento’s giallo-lite is a languid examination of emotional sterility, shared guilt, social futility and self-imposed isolation in which narrative only plays a minor role. Usually that skeletal narrative carries fabulous photography, dizzying camerawork, extreme violence and gasp-out-loud stylish effrontery. Here the 106-minute load is a lot lighter and therefore the whole enterprise seems even more superficial. My advice in how best to enjoy The Card Player is the same as Anna’s to Remo when he worries his video-gaming knowledge won’t be enough to save Lucia’s life. “Let the wind guide you”, she says. And wearing my best poker-face, I’ll second that!

reviewed by Alan Jones

credits
cast:	Stefania Rocca, Liam Cunningham, Claudio Santamaria, Silvio Muccino, Fiore Argento, Mario Opinato
director:	Dario Argento
producer:	Claudio Argento
screenplay:	Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini
cinematography:	Benoit Debie
music:	Claudio Simonetti
sfx:	Sergio Stivaletti

technical information
negative:	35mm
print:	35mm
aspect ratio:	1.85:1
format:	Spherical

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