Premiered at Austin’s Fantastic Fest, where first-time director Martín Mauregui won the Best Director Award, and screened at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia a day before its release in Spain (10 October, distributed by DeAPlaneta), Crazy Old Lady has two aces up its sleeve: production duties by JA Bayona (the director of another macabre chiller set in an old mansion, The Orphanage [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film]) and the omnipresence of a true force of nature – master performer Carmen Maura.

At the proud age of 80, the four-time Goya winner once again proves there is no role she cannot take on, however extreme. And Alicia, the lead here, is anything but easy because, as the title hints, she is not in her right mind, leaping from one mood to another with the agility of a kangaroo while never losing that essential ingredient of any fiction – credibility.

Here, Maura brings to vigorous life a woman left alone in her house with only her lapdog for company, whom she sporadically despises and has therefore named Franco. But Laura, her daughter, who is travelling, worries about her mother’s condition and asks her ex-boyfriend Pedro (played by Daniel Hendler, who holds his own against the tsunami unleashed by Maura) to go to the family home to check whether the elderly woman is alright and, above all, taking her medication.

Once Pedro crosses that threshold, he enters a nightmarish realm ruled with iron despotism by Alicia. His Via Crucis begins: the moustache he sports will fling open Pandora’s box, triggering in the old lady unhappy memories from her past.

Speaking with an Argentinian accent and expressions – as the story is set there – Maura makes sure no one nods off for the remainder of the running time. The beast within her character awakens, and old wounds resurface, hunting for a culprit and the revenge that will ensue. Then, the genre’s most familiar elements unfurl before the eyes of poor Pedro – and those of the equally beleaguered viewer: blood, jump scares and violence, in sufficient doses to shock (especially in one scene with sexual content).

At the same time, Crazy Old Lady is more than a mere carousel of effects – it strives to go further than this, breathing meaning into and justifying its deranged plot. As in Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden, there is a past to exorcise and a criminal to be brought to justice, collateral damage notwithstanding. And although its tone is playful, dominated by over-the-top, jet-black humour verging on comic-book excess, this feature remains an acting duel between victim and executioner – just as James Caan faced off against Oscar winner Kathy Bates in Misery. If that film’s trigger was the extreme love of a deadly fan, here, it is the violent legacy of the abuse of authority.

Crazy Old Lady is a co-production between Películas La Trini, Primo Content (Argentina), Mr. Fields and Friends, Bambú Producciones and La Unión de los Ríos (Argentina), with the participation of Amazon Spain. French outfit StudioCanal is handling its sales.