Fraser may look like an outsider (he’s got fried blond hair, a wispy mustache, and painted fingernails), but when you take a step back, he’s no more out of sync with his surroundings than the other army brats who share an estrangement from any particular culture. And the rather dull mise-en-scène of We Are Who We Are foregrounds a distinct and pervasive sense of alienation. The extravagant wardrobe of Tilda Swinton in I Am Love buttressed her character’s performance as a particular kind of (very monied) Milanese woman.
In Suspiria (2018), Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror film, a denuded color palette served the bleakness of its story (involving occult ritual and a reckoning with Germany’s Nazi past). It’s a different sort of story from Guadagnino, in other words, but not without its reasons-or its own strange beauty.
