by Jason Adams
To tell the truth it's been taking me a coven's worth of willpower not to use this "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series week after week as an excuse to go through the cast-list of Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria one by one by one and highlight every single woman in the film -- there's nary a weak link in sight, everybody is serving something special, and that's a lot of every-bodies given how deep that cast-list runs.
Thankfully I'm not alone in my obsession, and one of my favorite horror writers on the entire internet, Stacie Ponder at Final Girl, has devoted the entire month of October to doing just that. She's not just talking the stellar cast though -- every day she's dissecting themes and images and if you ask me proving to the naysayers (of which those of us who adore the film know there are many, more many, than there are lovers) that Guadagnino gifted us with a profoundly rich and moving horror masterpiece, aching up to its eaves with feeling.
Anyway Stacie's impelling piece last week on the love relationship between Susie (Dakota Johnson) and Sara (Mia Goth) finally managed to break my back with respect to holding out on talking this movie -- specifically I've had nothing but Goth's work on my mind for seven straight days. And what a blessing that's been...
Goth's only been acting since 2013 and film-makers have tended to rely heavily on her astonishing face -- specifically those great big eyes of hers, which have brought her comparison to Shelley Duvall and with good reason. Goth has done several scary movies and she fits right in with those eyes, but Guadagnino gives her so much more to play with than just terrified victim -- the arc of that relationship with Johnson is the crux of it, but one of my favorite scenes in the film is the one where Sara goes to meet Dr. Klemperer (Old Man Tilda), and it's all due to Goth's performance.
The scene is three minutes long and Sara politely, discretely, cycles through all of the emotions -- she starts out composed (my god how composed Goth gets to look in the film's best fashions) and almost amused by this funny old man. But as his story grows stranger and drags more of her friends into its muck she quickly grows terrified, and Goth sells the evolution flawlessly. You can see it sneak up on her, the violence of it; watch the way she chews that cake. I find food acting will often highlight an actor's worst instincts -- bad actors over-chew and swing their cutlery around emphatically.
Goth does none of that. Sara is quietly enjoying that cake -- in her performance you can imagine how these dancers don't get to enjoy cake (or chicken wings, to reference an earlier scene) all that often. Food, specifically Bad Unhealthy Food, becomes sacred. And you can watch the joy of that delicious looking cake just drain right out of Sara as Klemperer's tales of horror take hold. A world where cake loses its deliciousness? Now that's horror.