AMERICAN MARY

Mary is a medical student who is constantly short on money. She is brilliant and has a guaranteed career ahead of her if it weren’t for her impulsive character, which doesn’t sit well with her professor. Her golden opportunity to make a name for herself in the world of surgery doesn’t take long to arrive because the doctor for whom she is interning invites her to a party with other surgeons. In reality, the party won’t be what she expected. Meanwhile, to earn some extra dollars, she responds to an online ad for a stripper job but will find herself involved in a shady criminal underworld. But not all bad things happen for a reason… First scene. The sharp blade of a scalpel glides over wrinkled skin. It is clear that this is not human skin but that of a turkey. Stitches are placed with precision on the cuts just made. The shot widens and we see a beautiful girl in her apartment, practicing surgery on the animal ready to be put in the oven. We immediately understand what the subject of the film we are about to see will be: surgery. And as has already happened with other recent films (one above all the good “Excision”) which had scalpel, needle and thread as their subject, the antennas rise on the heads of splatter fans. All the necessary ingredients are present to make “American Mary” a film worthy of being remembered by enthusiasts and it is already being talked about overseas as a cult movie. There is blood, lots of blood. There are sex scenes and several attractive women dressed in revealing outfits. There are surgical notions used as a method of torture. There is a parade of scalpel mutants, people who love to modify the human body to transform themselves into something different, with horns protruding under the skin from the head, sharp teeth or forked tongues. And then there is she, Katherine Isabelle, whom we had already appreciated as a good actress in the series “Ginger Snaps,” here perfectly cast in the role of (slightly) victim and (mostly) perpetrator, in which she also showcases her stunning physique in a series of very tight fetish dresses. The guys will remember for a long time her sensual dance on stage while she pours a glass of blood over herself. A cross between “Nip/Tuck” and “American Psycho,” “American Mary” is a story of ordinary madness, perhaps much more common than we can imagine. It is an exaggerated staging of the carnal perversions of people who use their own body as if it were the blank canvas of a painter, a block of marble from which to extract something that does not exist. These acts of extreme mutilation that go far beyond the common tattoo are perhaps given by dissatisfaction with one’s appearance or the uncontrollable desire to stand out. In the parade of bizarre characters supporting body modification (among whom the Twins, powerful and crazy, and Beatress, a fake version of Betty Boop, stand out) Mary moves, a model student who has something to avenge. And as tradition dictates, revenge will come and will be unleashed without mercy. It’s a film of highs and lows, with important sequences like the party Mary attends or the various moments of surgery, strong scenes and well-planned, accompanied by an insistent soundtrack that makes the atmosphere even more sensually sick. What perhaps works less is the development of the plot. The film starts slowly with a good characterization of Mary’s character, her ambitions and financial problems, also leaving room for a family parenthesis, described only by phone but rather effective in presenting the character. When Mary is overwhelmed by the events that have accidentally upended her life, everything becomes more frenetic and the calm we witnessed in the early scenes is replaced by a succession of convulsive events, losing a bit of the initial power of the story to make room for more crude violence, transforming a very promising start into a common psychological thriller, albeit of good level and a step above mainstream genre productions. A final piece of advice: if you know any girl who is specializing in surgery, please, don’t wrong her. She has the knowledge and the right weapons to make you pay dearly.