Since X and PearlTi West has forged a strong reputation among nostalgic retro horror films. With his parody « gorific » announced in three parts, Mia Goth had a meta role that could give her career new impetus. Presented to NIFFF in preview, MaXXXine comes to close the arch opened in 2022 with X. Closer to the giallo than from the slasher to the Tobe HooperIs this epilogue the fireworks expected? Back on an anthology not like the others.
A Star is Porn
For the young audience, X and Pearl were the front door to the cinema of Ti West but also – and above all – the opportunity to discover the talent of Mia Goth, a new age ofA24. The one who made his first steps to the cinema in the sulphurous Nymphomaniac: Vol. 2 (2013) never completely distanced itself from subversive roles or violence (The Survivalist, High Life, Suspiria).
In X released in 2022, Mia Goth encamped the role of the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher. The young Maxine Minx then aspired to become a porn actress at the same time as the America of the seventies stoked. New eldorado, the « chic porn » Then explode America. Exits the butt movies distributed under the coat and in the peep shows as Ti West will then represent it with an amused look in Pearl. In full effervescence, porn will now be entitled to its rising stars in the image of the great Hollywood. Powered by the HSV industry, adult films invade the videoclub stalls in record time. It is also the golden age of horror films that know how to maintain a close relationship with the X industry in terms of both production and commercial target.
In the wake of post-1968 sexual liberation, the Beat Generation has shaken American society in its certainty. In the face of the puritanism of the old generations fed with benedicity, young people challenged the foundations of American society between underground and exploration of new possibilities. These years will also be the scene of reactionary counter-demonstrations and bitter legal battles over the definition and contours of obscenity. This societal framework in the midst of boiling, it was already found in watermark X.
Slasher decomplexed and regressive, X is located at the edge of the rape and revenge and Tronsaw Massacre (1974). We find the peaty side of the Bayou and its well-known caricature of the mutilated Red necks, all always sprinkled with a well-feeling black humour. Horror is never very far from eroticism, if not pornography, so there's nothing annoid that this porn movie shoot ends up in bloodbath. Magnetic archetype of female psychotic character, Maxine is the embodiment of madness, like the Psychosis (1960) whose echoes sound in certain plans and express references throughout the trilogy.
Porn to be wild
In 2023, Ti West this time took everyone short with Pearl, prequel de X, where Maxine's country youth was discovered. Shot in New Zealand in the midst of a pandemic, the Pearl stood at the heart of the crazy years in a post-World War I America in the throes of the Spanish flu epidemic that will take up to 100 million victims. Maxine is then far from the assurance that we know him in X. Rattled by repressed desires that a deep sexual appetite fails to satisfy, the unhappy woman is obliged to juggle between a fundamentalist family and a vegetable as a father. Maxine revealed a whole different face. Early sentimental disappointments, repeated failures and so many disillusionments sounded the end of carelessness and inescapable shift to an insatiable pornographic industry.
Totally against foot of the first flap, Pearl was amusing to represent an anti-Maxine, frog to bless a bit of an ass and paradoxically ready to do anything to satisfy his thirst for fame. Nobody forgot his iconic « A staaaaar », pronounced with a Texas accent cutting with a knife. An impressive performance for a British actress. At the crossing of the Wizard of Oz (1939) in decadent version and a tribute assumed to the films Technicolor of the golden age of Hollywood, Pearl was an operation destroying all the dreams of youth. It is the old hymn of the juvenile decadence of children corrupted by the vices of pornography as claimed by fierce detractors at the time.
To light years from The little house in the meadow (1974) recalled his native campaign, Pearl One by one fell the fragile dikes of mental health of his main character, nullifying his representations of the real world. A triple health, social and patriarchal confinement as Mr Wilkes rightly explained in his critical. Pearl is a proposal to the antipodes of the fergue that was known to him in X as well as a pleasant surprise that was discovered last year at the NIFFF.
Maxine fucking Minx
With MaXXXineTi West recasts the cards again and plays with the time machine. After the crazy years and the seventies, the film took us in 1985. « Tell me five celebrities who started in horror movies » Asks Maxine about his friend managing video club. Jamie Lee Curtis, John Travolta, Half Moore, Brooke Shields... There's no shortage of names. At each film, Ti West took the same starting point in another form: how to become a movie star in the great Hollywood grinder? You feel the influence of the famous Surreal case of the black Dahlia in the background. Wildly murdered, the sadly legendary victim had settled in Hollywood to become an actress as Maxine's character... and actress Mia Goth, who also lives in Los Angeles today.
Other times, other manners, the 1980s offer to see liberated women and careerists, ready to do anything to conquer the city of the Angels. Closer to the black novel than the slasher, Ti West's latest film again avoids the pitfall of the easy suite. This time a serial killer sows chaos in the city and comes to revive the trauma of the massacre of X. All giallo codes are successfully declined. The murders are over-dressed as the psychopath, model par excellence of the genre. Dressed in an impermeable mackintosh and equipped with a bright white weapon in his black gloved hand, it's the very image of the faceless killer of the film Six women for the murderer (1964). In the wake of Dario ArgentoTi West delivers us a modern giallo pastiche. If the formula is well calibrated, it will be regrettable, however, that not all ideas, although ingenious, are pushed to the end.
More bitter in sharp scenes, MaXXXne offers however excellent secondary characters and some well-feeling gags. Weared by a three star casting, MaXXXine let yourself be tasted without sunburning. Kevin Bacon is perfect in the role of a dirty private detective. As for Giancarlo Esposito, he is unrecognizable as Maxine's impresario and protector, finally released from porn. The latter is close to picking up the role of her life in an ironically titled horror film The Puritan. From porn to horror and horror to porn, the loop is closed.
Where movies like Diabolik (2021) pushed the pottery to the maximum, Maxxxine is strangely a bit more prude in his epilogue, no doubt because he moves away from the slasher. Far from being missed, this last film succeeds all that it undertakes but with a little less panache than the previous films. Remains that end that falls like a hair in the soup. With this budding water epilogue, the spectator would certainly have waited for more hemoglobin as would his amoral heroine who would want this frenzy to never stop. So do we.
An incomplete feeling that will be forgiven for the ingenious articulation of this anthology. Ti West was able to reverse the table by crossing the genres despite shootings made in record times. And just for this prowess, don't let our pleasure go to the hall on July 31, 2024 in France. We now wish Mia Fucking Goth to break the Hollywood door to get roles as incarnate and barred as the one Ti West has offered him during these three beautiful years. Will Mia Goth know how to free herself from horror now?
Trailer of MaXXXine
Ti West - Director of trilogy
A true orchestra artist, Ti West is most often the director, only writer and director of his films. He has signed series and feature films that pay tribute to genre cinema and horror. He forged his reputation with The House of the Devil (2009), The Innkeepers (2011) or the western In a Valley of Violence (2016). His trilogy X (2022), Pearl (2023) and MaXXXine (2024) is a critical success even with mainstream media. Find our technical tests and reviews published on MaG below. Better to have seen the previous movies before watching MaXXXine at the cinema... There you are!
[...] USA | Release date : 31/07/2024 | Directed by: Ti West |International competition | Critique to read here [...]
[...] West at the Gérardmer festival. Read our file on his trilogy X, Pearl, [...]