'The woman in the window' is more than a tribute to Hitchcock or another Netflix thriller: a colorful neogiallo with a sublime staging

Espinof's note

The premiere of 'The woman in the window' (The Woman in the Window, 2021) in Netflix has put an end to an injured race that has maintained the film in the fridge for several years, to which the pandemic has given the last tiprelegating its distribution to domestic platforms, when precisely the adaptation of the novel of A.J.Finn of 2018 is a luxurious production full of first -class names, starting with its director Joe Wright.

The wait is an advertising itself and in this case it seems that it has played against the reception of the film, which seems to be expected a thriller of actions with great dialogues and that touch of prestige of more contained proposals to which thisBet on risk with Amy Adams unleashed has no intention of resembling.However, the hard initial criticism and public reaction, comparing it absurdly with a mere imitation of ‘the indiscreet window’, or a desktop telephilm, it cannot be more unfair.

Great study bets condemned to worship

We recently spoke of great horror study bets that end up being released by the back door, misunderstood by their producers, and very usually by the public, once they come to light pushing them to a wave of contagious negativity to which it is easySign up at first, but then, with cases such as 'The cure of well -being' (A Cure for Welness, 2017) or 'The Empty Man' (2020), become a cult follow -up, when a second look revealsthat there are cinema pieces that, at least, leave the conventional.

The case of 'The woman in the window' is not so much of excessively strange film, since in the sales and absorption process of Fox by Disney - a common point of many of these great studio adventures - there was aPrevious pass that forced to shoot material to do everything more chewable, since the test subjects seemed not to understand much what happened.Seeing the film, the indecipherable quality of much of the footage is evident, so that the director's cut could have been a great Avis in the thriller of psychological horror.

What remains tends more to a moderately accessible film, but its tribute nature navigates between different textures that are not those that can be found on a Friday premiere of Netflix, nor practically in the cinema of great current premiere.That is, a review of the suspense cinema that navigates from Hitchcock to the psychological terror of women on the edge of mental collapse, typical of the labyrinthine dealer of Roman Polanski and his trilogy of the apartments, through the thriller and even more difficult domestic terrors ofclassify the 90s.

From Hitchcock to Giallo

'The woman in the window' has a protagonist with agoraphobia, but that fear is barely used in the film, as can do 'Copycat' (1995) or the most recent 'Wolf Hour' (2019), and hereThe resource serves as an explanation of the mental state that is built on Anna, the doctor performed by Amy Adams, who water her nights of alcohol and pills and remains locked in a space that takes different forms and environments according to her emotional states.Wrigth is more interested in defining geography to play in it than in the criminal plot, because in reality, the film is describing the world of a non -reliable narrator.

Certain decisions may swim against this idea, but linear history is not as important as the way it is perceived by Anna.Instead of a purely oppressive, serious and playful atmosphere, 'The woman in the window' decideswho makes many direct and indirect tributes, of 'vertigo' a 'remembers' - seems to work in the league of its most shameless and unleashed imitations.

From the obsessive nuance and voyeur of 'Blow-Up' (1966) to the careless caricaturesca of 'double body' (body Double, 1984), the idea of the vision of a murder through the window is too iconic to not have discovered it inDozens of films, but Wright is more aware of the style and shape of those great variations of Hitchcock that even enters without a helmet in pure giallo, precisely with scenes such as the murder, which seem to have works inspired by Antonioni, even starring David Hemmings, such as 'Dark Red' (Profondo Rosso, 1975).

Double impact

In fact, the staging of the film refers to the origins of the giallo - let's not forget that the founding film of the genre, 'the girl who knew too much', was a great tribute to Hitchcock, like the large part of the later films -and even the unreal lighting of Mario Bava of 'The three faces of fear' (1963), whose history 'The phone' is the ABC of the films of women alone at home with a murderer on the prowl, such as, for example, in theStart of 'Scream' (1996).And not by chance, the present ends up having a third unbridled act that would have signed the Wes Craven more addicted to the gags of porrazo to the murderer and puddles of blood.

But while others try to imitate the excess of the Italian school with color filters and a more or less touched and arbitrary use of lighting, the exquisite photograph of Bruno delBonnel blies the halos to compose an elegant chromatic dimension that works next to the atmospheretelluric, playing the form on the background without shame, almost in an exercise of visual fetishism that recreates the nightmare without awareness of the protagonist's time in an unreal purgatory.

This creates a very marked but subtle style, which relies on master art planning and design, which cannot be further from "a desktop telephilme", but propose a scenario full of details, possibilities, distance and ideas thatremind the best gender cinema of the 70s.Wright has no shame and raises crazy transitions and demoded with details that even idealize findings out of time, leading to vertiginous flashbacks with sequential brain solutions, violently divided planes, split diopters and other tricks of the Palma School.

A transnochado debauche with dessert splatter

Meanwhile, the mystery ceases to be as important as the paranoia of not knowing if the perception of the protagonist deceives her or us, and when everything is discovered, the film also shows in its deck its horror roots of Grand Guignol, ofHagxploitation to Slasher, without fear of the comic derail and occasional moms of gore that do not show any fear of ridicule.Nor does its collection of big names have, with Anthony Mackie or Wyatt Russell in small papers and Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman as secondary in absolutely over the top way to reinforce the hilarious dislate.

The presence of Jennifer Jason Leigh puts a familiar face for the thriller of the 90hidden in its filmography as 'midnight heart' (Hearth of Midnight, 1989) and other psychological horror movies in which architectural construction is one more character, such as 'Apartment Zero' (1988), where intrigue does not have so much weightLike disorientation within large buildings.

The strength of 'The woman in the windowFirst level that has its proposal many integers above the Netflix catalog.A party that is not afraid to show Mamarracha - that photo with a cat and glass of wine in a plane with a glass of wine - while playing with creative visual resources, deliciously anachronistic and without filter, a finding for an era crowded to the same patterns the same patternsof narration without inventive and films cut by template.