Guadagnino’s meta faux-documentary is messy, tonally jarring and insensitive, but Tilda Swinton as actress-narrator-interviewer makes it more palatable to accept as his debut feature reconstructs a ghastly real-life murder with curious sensationalism.
Review #2,976
Dir. Luca Guadagnino
1999 | Italy, UK | Drama, Crime | 92min | 1.85:1 | English
Not rated – likely M18 for violence, sexual scenes, nudity and disturbing theme
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Fabrizia Sacchi, Andrew Tiernan
Plot: An Italian movie crew goes to London to make a documentary about a murder case that took place a few years before.
Awards: Won FEDIC Award – Special Mention (Venice)
Source: Argent Films
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Slightly Mature – Reenactment of Crime; Murder; Meta-filmmaking
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: General Arthouse
Viewed: MUBI
Spoilers: No
One of the brand-name directors working today, Luca Guadagnino has enjoyed all kinds of successes, most notably in recent years as sparked particularly by Call Me by Your Name (2017).
His first feature, however, is best ignored, well, according to the mostly terrible reviews. That being said, I found it a mildly fascinating exercise, and it should interest completists hoping for some clues to early Guadagnino. The Protagonists, as it is called, is messy, tonally jarring, and some might even find it insensitive.
Dissecting a real-life London murder case that happened a few years back when two young men premeditatedly decided to kill a random person in a car just for the fun and experience of it, Guadagnino treats his film like a meta faux-documentary following an Italian production crew attempting to research and reenact scenes for a true-crime programme.
The unnecessarily violent and bloody scenes that are reconstructed do appear to be in bad taste, yet interestingly, Guadagnino (through Tilda Swinton as his ‘actress-cum-narrator-cum-interviewer’) also interviews the victim’s family and those involved in the case.
“They lack the thing that stops most of us from doing what they do.”
I think this is where The Protagonists feels like a self-conscious work that demands us to offer a closer look at its construct.
It is not just narcissistic cinema-as-reportage/investigation meets Lynchian-labyrinthine-world; Guadagnino’s film calls to question the process and ethics of artistic reconstruction and expression, reframing, in this case, the murderers as the titular ‘protagonists’ of a seedy crime thriller.
Swinton is a revelation in The Protagonists, playing herself and everything in between, in a chameleon-like performance that might have obsessed Guadagnino enough to give us close-ups of her breaking the fourth wall and staring deep into our souls.
She makes the film all the more palatable to accept, though not necessarily enjoyable. In short, what an odd work about why people are so eternally curious about the sensationalism of heinous crimes.
Grade: B-
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 