Mother of Tears
Director: Dario Argento
Release year: 2007
A grave containing a rune-covered box is discovered outside a churchyard in Rome. Art restoration student Sarah Landy helps her tutor open the box, which contains magical artifacts including a tunic that bestows great power to the still-alive medieval witch Mater Lachrymarum. Landy escapes an attack by demonic creatures and goes on the run as Rome falls into chaos, but Landy learns she is the daughter of a powerful witch and might be able to stop Mater Lachrymarum from bringing the second age of magic.
That’s a lot of plot. Also, the police are chasing Sarah, a gang of partying goth witches are roaming the city, Sarah’s friend and lover Michael loses his son to the Mater, an alchemist gets involved, and Sarah’s dead mother can talk to her from another realm. Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi were inspired to write the “Three Mothers” films (Suspiria, Inferno, Mother of Tears) by Thomas de Quincey’s 1845 prose poetry collection, Suspiria de Profundis. That explains the involved and detailed lore that the characters discuss, which adds a layer of mystery and weight to the story, but also can be pretty confusing.
There’s a flavour of The Omen to the scenes Rome residents start doing terrible things. The brutality of the violence seems like an attempt to capture medieval tortures mixed with a vision of hell seen as the cruelties people will inflict on each other. The Mater likes to lick the tears from her tortured victims.
There are a few Argento flourishes with the camera, and towards the end there’s a subtle variation of the original Suspiria soundtrack by Goblin, which is fun. It’s a flawed film, but full of energy and life, and I respect a trilogy of films that are in the same universe with the same overarching story, but which are stylistically and in the pacing of things so different.