36 STEPS - Review "Austin Chronicle"

PAURA FLICS PRESENT:
THE US PREMIERE OF ADRIAN GARCIA BOGLIANO´S

“36 STEPS”

From the director of the critically acclaimed “Rooms for Tourists”

Screening at the Alamo Drafthouse South
Wednesday, April 25, 9:45 PM
Producer Peter Marai in attendance

More information at: http://www.cinelasamericas.org/ / http://www.pauraflics.blogspot.com/

“Austin Chronicle” Review (21 April 07)

Gorehounds, asshounds: Run, don't walk, to this budget-conscious and kooky but surprisingly effective slasher flick from the director of Habitaciones Para Turistas (Rooms for Tourists), an Argentine favorite from 2005's festival. Bogliano layers familiar horror motifs with a critique of women's oppression, albeit one accompanied by gynecologically intimate low angles of half-wedgied bikini bottoms and all manner of graphic violence: strobe-lit torture montages, branding, and a choreographed dance sequence. Bogliano's girls frolic in the garden hose in winking slo-mo sequences, but soon enough we see that in their poolside vacation house they are kept captive like Troma babes in a pervy zoo exhibit. The rules – silence, obedience, and happiness – are enforced by a club-wielding, 300-pound man-boy who chops off fingers. Having thus inculpated the voyeuristic, sadistic, and presumably male gaze of his audience, Bogliano cranks up the camp, speeding toward a splatter finale competently stylized after the pulpy mayhem of giallo and "killer party" slashers like My Bloody Valentine. Let's not call it feminist, but there is something recognizably anti-patriarchal and satirical in the way the women are trained to a whistle and forced to smile and act nice, then pitted against one another for survival. – Marrit Ingman