Halloween Horrorfest 2018: AMERICAN MARY (2012)

This is what I have learned in the last 24 hours--never, but never underestimate the Great and Terrible Soska Sisters. These talented twins (who are presently working on a reboot of the David Cronenberg classic Rabid) retweeted the poll I posted yesterday, and their film suddenly shot ahead to a powerful lead none of the other entrants could come close to.

I hope they don’t mind that I think they’re kinda hot, in addition to being pretty kick-ass filmmakers*...

I should mention that, much like needles, surgery kind of freaks me out.  The idea that people voluntarily let themselves be cut into and altered is frightening to me.  And while there is little in the way of actual flesh cutting--the Soskas seem more interested in an internal, rather than external, kind of transformation as represented by their protagonist--there’s enough implied stuff and enough after-effects of surgery that  my flesh properly crawled.  Now, if all that the women brought to the table was these modifications, I would probably be writing this film off.  But unlike Eli Fucking Roth (to whom the film is dedicated), who would let the grotesque overwhelm the message he’s trying to send, the Soskas never lose fact that this is about a person--and as such opens up a dialogue with their viewer about body image, the nature of art, and the limits society puts on self-expression.

But, much like last night’s movie and a film that shares a similar title I covered earlier this month, American Mary’s greatest special effect is Katharine Isabelle.  As Mary, the medical student who becomes sucked into the world of Extreme Body Modification, Isabelle is able to walk a very, very fine line between being satirical and sinister, and that helps emphasize the ambiguity of Mary’s journey.  She has a wonderful deadpan delivery that allows us to read into it what we want to, which the Soskas take full advantage of.  It allows us to emphasize with her behavior even as it become more gruesome and irrational.  By the film’s final act, Isabelle creates two very separate personas to cope with the life she is living and flips between them effortlessly.

...which is why I think you can view American Mary as the origin of a Batman villain that’s normalized by a subculture she discovers.  The way Mary’s descent into her dark career is accompanied by an almost intentional fetishization (the first incident that starts her on this journey sees her tending to a badly wounded man while in a stripper outfit) seems to spur her on to create an actual costume while operating in her ‘Bloody Mary’ mode.  She has her ‘One Bad Day,' her own henchman, a secret lair, even a nemesis in a detective played by the curious Detective Dolor (for some strange reason, John Emmet Tracy is an only person in the film with an English accent).  But because her criminal and psychotic activity is in service to the body modification culture she operates in, we see almost nothing entropic about it.

I know I’ve been praising Isabelle to the sky, but there are other good performances here.  Antonio Cupo, as Mary’s enabler(?), Billy manages to create a complex co-dependent bond with Mary and accurately conveys how desire and fear tend to feel awfully similar.  Burlesque performer Tristan Risk (seriously; she counts among her skills fire eating and blockheading) takes what could have been a parody character in Beatress and creates someone sympathetic, fully realized and endearing.  We see beyond the borderline grotesque of her modified form as a real-life avatar of Betty Boop and feel what she’s like as a person.  And even though his dialogue and screen time is limited, I dug Twan Holliday as Mary’s henchman, Lance; yes, he’s a hulking presence, but Holliday gives him moments of thoughtfulness that paints a very different kind of relationship between him and his boss.*

I don’t know if American Mary is for everyone; the intimacy of the narrative might make some viewers terribly uncomfortable.  But it’s an interesting story emphasized by Isabelle’s powerful performance that actually has something to say.  I’d recommend this film, even for people like me who get squidged out by needles and scalpels and other, more exotic instruments of surgical percision.

You can still head over to my Twitter Page to vote on tomorrow’s Halloween Horrorfest Movie of the Day.  I should warn you, though, that the Great and Terrible Soska Twins have helped create a commanding lead for one of my choices, so there might be little point in voting for something else....

(Seriously, Jen and Sylvia--your interest in the Horrorfest is appreciated, and I bestow upon you guys the title ‘The Great and Terrible’ with absolute affection and respect.  Please don’t hate me...)

*--This is not the first time I found a female filmmaker hot; I had a furious crush on Kathryn Bigelow after I met her circa Near Dark.  Being hot, however, is not a requirement of me finding a female filmmaker great.
**--Twan is probably the only reason I may watch 2009's Stan Helsing, if only because I can’t imagine what a character named ‘Pleatherface’ is like.