When David Gordon Green departed the director’s seat for the SUSPIRIA remake (which would’ve featured Isabelle Huppert and Janet McTeer), he maintained that he still intended to work on it as a producer, and even told Crave Online in June that he had spoken to “a great Italian director” about helming the film under his supervision.
That director appears to have been Luca Guadagnino, and according to Hitfix, he already has an idea of who he wants for his cast: the four principals of his A BIGGER SPLASH, which just premiered at Venice.
Namely, that would be Dakota Johnson, Matthias Schoenaerts, Ralph Fiennes, and Tilda Swinton.
Guadagnino doesn’t really have experience in the horror field, but that cast would be terrific if he was able to shepherd them all onboard. Johnson, with her soft-spoken strength and open-faced beauty, would be a near-ideal successor to Jessica Harper, Swinton could let her freak flag fly (as she’s prone to do) as the Joan Bennett character, and Ralph Fiennes in the Udo Kier role? Well, that sounds just dandy to me.
Of course, the big question is how Guadagnino (or whoever the hell eventually is yelling "Action!" on this thing) will approach the material. Soundbites are one thing, but SUSPIRIA (and Argento's work in general) has such a distinct vibe, tone, and color palatte that the style of the remake, whether it's similar or a marked deviation, can only be seen as a direct response to that work. Does Guadagnino have the visual eye to help us put aside Argento's deep reds (heh) and claustrophobic blackness for an hour and a half?
Things are early on, but the strong reception to A BIGGER SPLASH and the apparently fun time the cast had making it place a potential reunion distinctly in the realm of possibility. But what’s certain is that the SUSPIRIA remake, like some of Dario Argento’s villains, refuses to stay dead, and that we’ll be hearing about some potential witches and their victims sooner than later.
