Trivia / Suspiria (2018)

• Acting for Two: For three, actually. Tilda Swinton plays Dr. Jozef Klemperer and Madame Blanc as well as Helena Markos.
  • Malgosia Bela plays Susie's mother as well as the avatar of Death.
• Cast the Expert:
  • Played with. "Lutz Ebersdorf", the pseudonym used for Tilda Swinton as Dr. Jozef Klemperer, has a fictitious backstory as an actual psychologist without any prior acting experience, chosen by director Luca Guadagnino for that very reason. He was such an unknown entity when announced in the role that many (correctly) speculated that he was actually Swinton under heavy makeup, which she eventually confirmed to be the case ahead of its release.
  • In the more traditional, real life version of this trope, all of the actresses who performed in the dance scenes (with the exceptions of Dakota Johnson and Mia Goth) were real-life dancers.
• The Cast Showoff: That horrible, nausea-inducing Body Horror scene where Suzie's dancing rips Olga's body to shreds? The actress who played Olga, Elena Fokina, is a professional dancer and contortionist. Only a small amount of prosthetics and CGI were used for some of the more impactful flips once Olga's limbs are bent backward.
• Cross-Cast Role: Tilda Swinton, in addition to Helena Markos and Madame Blanc, also portrays Dr. Klemperer, going so far as to have a prosthetic penis strapped onto her as part of her heavy makeup in the role.
• Disowned Adaptation: Dario Argento went on record several times about his opinion on the remake. While he wasn't exclusively negative, speaking well of Luca Guadagnino as a director and person, he made it clear that he found the remake to be less than satisfactory.
  "I saw the remake of Suspiria at the cinema. It didn't excite me, it betrayed the spirit of the original film: there's little fear, there's no music. I wasn't very satisfied with the film, it's so-so, a refined film, like Guadagnino, who is a fine person."
  "What can I say? The movie's been watched, it's up to you judging it. It's a different movie from mine, made with a different spirit, with Luca Guadagnino's refined, elegant and shapely style, who remains one of the best European directors. And what about the differences from the original one? My style is wild and gritty while the remake lacks of it. Horror is an internal issue which it depends from what you have inside."
  "To me, the remake of Suspiria doesn’t look like a well-realized project. It lacks fear, music, tension, and scenic creativity."
• Fake American: The French Sylvie Testud as the American Miss Griffith.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Luca Guadagnino has said that had people failed to guess that "Lutz Ebersdorf" is Tilda Swinton, he would've put an In Memoriam for Ebersdorf, who would've "died" a short time before the film's release.
  • Guadagnino originally intended to include all four of the leads of his film A Bigger Splash in Suspiria, but ultimately only Johnson and Swinton returned, without Ralph Fiennes or Matthias Schoenaerts.

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