Insofar
as Scarlet Diva is autobiographical,
the message is that a goodlooking actress cannot avoid becoming
a junkie and a slut. The author, director, and actress playing
the title role is Asia Argento, a talented Italian who comes
from a family of artists. The most quotable epigram in the
film is "An artist is a prostitute." When the film
begins, twenty-four-year-old Anna Battista, the Scarlet Diva,
is being interviewed in Locarno; she is asked all sorts of
preposterous questions. Off camera, she is hounded by men
who want to make love to her. Next, her work takes her to
Paris, where she visits her agent and friend Veronica (played
by Vera Gemma), who has been tied up for two days in an excruciatingly
painful position by her lover Hamid (played by Alessandro
Villari). While in Paris, she meets Kirk Vaines (played by
Jean Shepard), an attractive rock singer from Australia, who
sweeps her off her feet because he wants to "make love,"
not just have sex. She also visits Amsterdam and Milan, experiencing
more degradation, then on to London. In England, a famous
photographer, Luke Ford (played by Vanessa Crane), furnishes
cocaine to her while she is in a pool, and she nearly drowns.
Then her agent introduces her to Barry Paar (played by Joe
Coleman), who sweet talks her about producing her screenplay
and starring in a film opposite Robert De Niro, and then he
insists on having sex with her. When she goes to Hollywood
to screen test for Paar's film, Robert De Niro is not in the
picture, so she realizes that he was only interested in another
sexual encounter and walks out. On returning to Rome, her
physician informs her that she is pregnant. Next, she goes
to Paris, where the father of her child, Kirk, is performing.
Eager to tell him that she is bearing his child, Kirk's bodyguards
tell her to back off so as not to intrude on his wife and
child. Throughout the film, Anna is haunted by memories, the
worst of which is how her mother (played by Daria Nocolodi,
her real-life mother) died of a drug overdose. In the end
she formulates a plan to "exorcise" herself from
a nightmare world of illicit drugs and tawdry sex: She wants
to become a director, which is of course what she is for Scarlet
Diva. The many autobiographical elements of
the film are best appreciated in the tabloids, but she has
definitely made her point. MH
I
want to comment on this film
