Dario Argento is my favorite horror filmmaker and I have just finished a rewatch of all of his feature films (and half of his television anthology works). And a ranking of his feature filmography is so 1 month ago so I guess another way to take stock of his films is by engaging with one of the most notorious elements of his output, the utilisation of (formerly estranged) daughter Asia Argento in starring or co-starring roles through a good chunk of his late half of the career. And more notoriously how many of those parts involve a degree of sexualization and outright nudity, which is just not what you’d expect from a father-daughter shoot. I expect there’s some contingent of horror movie fandom that’s gotten used to it and at this point I do just roll with it like all other alienating aspects of art (is that not how one navigates the occasionally dark intuitions of any artist in any area?), but I never ever have gotten used enough to it.
I won’t posture at pretending this below ranking from least disconcerting to outright objection is completely free of judgment, but I’ll merely acknowledge that matters like these often times rely on my listening to the person at the center of the lens here and Asia Argento has never appeared to voice the slightest discomfort about her role in her father’s movies. Given her recent history of openly acknowledging active sexual abuse in the industry (alongside other acknowledgements that she’s been a perpetrator of such abuse), I don’t imagine she’d hesitate to indict her father if she felt harmed in any significant way. It’s two people whom I’ve never met, in a culture I’ve almost no tie to, making art I could never have conceived. It’s just also the case that alarm bells ring in my head, but for a filmmaker working in a genre based on primordial transgressiveness, is that not often feature rather than bug?
Let us figure for ourselves.
6. Dark Glasses (2022) – Very easy security in this ranking, just a side character with never a state of undress or leeringness. It’s probably not for nothing that this also ends up her best performance in any of her dad’s pictures.
5. The Stendahl Syndrome (1996) – Believe it or not, the movie in which Asia’s character suffers two on-screen rapes feels among the least exploiting of their collaborations. Part of this is how the camera never exploits the bodies in these horrible moments (if my memory serves correctly, both sequences have her dressed as well which is not the case for the other rape/murder victims we see) and the film often has a sense of disgust and hostility at what is being performed. Most importantly, it feels like a film particularly examining with clear-eyed grace the mental and physical trauma of such acts and of the 6 movies Asia acted in with her father, this film sees Dario most insistent on letting Asia’s performance define the trajectory of her character’s aftermath life.
4. Dracula 3D (2012) – I will confess the craftiness of having Dracula hide a vampire’s bite so well that it plausibly requires the character to be naked and bathed by a servant to find the bite is something that would impress me if it wasn’t for who is directing the movie (plus it’s not a lewd area where the bite is located). I am relieved that there’s not much more than that, creepy as it is already.
3. The Phantom of the Opera (1998) – I think there’s maybe one sex scene, most of the weirdness comes from the extremely sheer outfits Asia wears as Christine. Most of the movie is so blatantly out there that I was a bit too distracted by everything else to feel uncomfortable with see-through dresses.
2. The Mother of Tears (2007) – It’s kind of insane how easily this can go from being number 2 to almost last place: that shower scene, which is less than a minute long and wholly removable with no effect on the overall film. I think that’s the only reason it’s more uncomfortable than it could have been, the clarity with which it goes out of the way to include the negligible material.
- Trauma (1993) – Look, dude, that’s your 17-year-old daughter (playing your 19-year-old stepdaughter).
Movie Motorbreath 