Vera Gemma – Through the Shattered Lens

In 2004’s The Card Player, a serial killer is haunting the streets of Rome. He’s abducting women and then taunting the police by demanding that they play online poker with him. If the police win a hand, the woman goes free. If the police lose, the woman is tortured and killed on a webcam. Unfortunately, it turns out that the police are lousy at playing poker. Actually, they’re lousy at just about everything. Whenever I watch The Card Player, I find myself imagining that I’m watching an episode of Law & Order: Remedial Police Unit. That’s a spin-off from the original Law & Order. It features incompetent, poorly trained detectives who are constantly forgetting to Mirandize suspects. I’m surprised that no one else has ever seen it.

There are two cops who are slightly competent. Anna Mari (Stefania Rocca) is the daughter of a man who wrote a book about how to play poker. (Hey, that might be helpful!) John Brennan (Liam Cunningham) is a tough Irish cop who is sent to Italy after the Card Player kills two British tourists. While the rest of the police force stands around and stares at the office computer all day, Anna Mari and Brennan actually try to track the killer down.

Oh, The Card Player. This film is often cited as being Dario Argento’s worst. To be honest, I think that’s a bit of an overreaction. The film’s not so much bad as it’s just kind of boring. It plays out like a police procedural and there’s little of Argento’s signature visual flair. There are way too many shots of people staring at screens with serious expressions on their faces. Like so many other directors before him, Argento struggles to find a way to make watching someone else play an online game interesting. Eventually, the police do win a hand and I cringed as all of the extras in the police station broke out into cheers. It felt corny and a bit silly. It definitely did not feel like Argento.

That said, the murders are memorably gruesome and the scenes where the bodies are recovered and then examined in the morgue are pure nightmare fuel. Argento tosses in a dancing coroner who takes way too much pleasure in discussing things like the cause of death. The sight of the coroner dancing brings to mind the moment in Tenebrae where John Saxon is stabbed in public and none of the witnesses seem to be particularly disturbed. There’s a chilling callousness to the moment and a reminder of why Argento often portrays insects as being more trustworthy and empathetic than humans. Stefania Rocca gives a good performance in a role that was originally meant to be played by Asia Argento. Liam Cunningham is today known more for his political vacuousness than his acting talent but he’s still believably rugged and cynical as Brennan.

Finally, the film’s depiction of online poker is very much a late-90s version of the Internet. Everything loads slowly, the graphics are awkward and stiff, and the whole thing projects a feeling of “Can you believe people actually pay for this?” Seen in 2026, it’s actually kind of charming. The old internet was so dorky that it was impossible not to love it.

The Card Player is pretty forgettable, especially when compared to Argento’s earlier films or, for that matter, a film like Sleepless. It’s not as bad as some say but it’s definitely not top-rate Argento.

The (Reviewed) Films of Dario Argento:

The Stendhal Syndrome is a real thing.

First noted by the author Stendhal, Stendhal Syndrome is something that happens when one is confronted by a sight that they never expected to see in person. Usually, it’s a work of great art that triggers the condition and the viewer becomes so overwhelmed by the sight of it that they’re left disorientated and even dizzy. People have reported it happening while visiting museums or historical cities. Recently, a few teenagers made the news when they claimed to have felt the syndrome’s symptoms while at a Taylor Swift concert.

I know that it’s a real thing because I’ve actually experienced Stendhal Syndrome. I was in Florence, the summer after I graduated from high school. One minute, I was fine and even feeling a little bratty, as one does when they’re 18 and they have their entire future ahead of them. But then I looked up at the sky and I saw the skyline of Florence, with its mix of the ancient and the modern and I suddenly became aware that I was in one of the oldest cities in the world and that I was standing on a street that had existed for centuries and I was looking at buildings and statues and paintings that most people would never get a chance to see in person and suddenly, the entire world seemed to be spinning around me. I had to actually sit down for a few minutes to catch my breath because I was so overwhelmed with emotion. My sisters assumed I was having an asthma attack but, even then, I understood that I was feeling something far different. At that moment, history become very real for me and I understood that I existed in the same universe as every great artist and writer. We were all a part of the same existence.

Dario Argento’s 1996 film, The Stendhal Syndrome, also takes place in Florence and features Asia Argento as Anna Mani, a police detective who is sent to the city to capture a serial killer. When Anna visits a museum, she is overwhelmed by what she sees. When she looks at Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, she hears the wind that blows Venus’s hair. When she views Bruegel’s Landscapes With The Fall Of Icarus she, perhaps significantly, becomes Icarus and flies through the air before crashing into the water below, where she shares a passionate kiss with a fish. In the museum, Anna faints. She drops her purse, giving Alfredo Grossi (Thomas Kretschmann) time to not only steal her gun but also the key to her hotel room.

Dazed and not even sure of who she is, Anna returns to her hotel. A copy of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch turns into a doorway, which she steps through. Finding herself on a rainy city street, Anna is reminded that she’s a detective and that she’s in Florence to catch a vicious killer. When Anna steps back into her room, she discovers that she’s not alone. Alfredo grabs her, rapes her, and abducts her. Anna manages to escape and runs through the streets of Florence while a naked and blood-covered Alfredo screams in the night, which is one of the most disturbing scenes that Dario Argento has ever given us. Alfredo continues to stalk Anna while Anna goes through some changes herself, buying a blonde wig and pursuing a relationship with a French art student (Julien Lambroschini).

The Stendhal Syndrome was the first of Argento’s film to feature CGI, not just in the scenes in which Anna enters the paintings but also in scenes where were literally follow the pills that she’s taken down her throat and where a bullet is seen to enter the face of one of Alfredo’s victims. (Alfredo looks through the resulting bullet holes and winks at Anna on the other other side.) Sometimes, the CGI is effective and sometimes it’s a bit too cartoonish for its own good. At its most effective, the CGI inspires us to wonder if Anna is seeing reality or if she’s still trapped in her Stendhal Syndrome-inspired fantasy world. The scene where disturbing graffiti comes to life may not exactly look real but it’s still undeniably effective. At other times, the special effects just come across as being a bit self-indulgent on Argento’s part.

The film is at its best when it concentrates on the cat-and-mouse game between Anna and Alfredo. As played by Thomas Kretschmann, Alfredo is one of the most terrifying characters to ever appear in an Argento film, a handsome and seemingly charming man who is actually fueled by pure evil and hate. Alfredo is a villain who takes a definite pride in his ability to hide his true nature from the rest of the world. At first, Anna seems almost too physically frail and emotionally open to be believable as a police detective but she soon proves herself to be far tougher than anyone realizes. Anna, it turns out, has secrets of her own. Shot roughly around the same time that Asia Argento was being victimized by Harvey Weinstein, the scenes where Alfredo attacks Anna are difficult to watch, as they should be. Dario Argento took a lot of criticism (particularly from his former partner, Daria Nicolodi) for casting his daughter in a role where she is assaulted but the film itself is fully on Anna’s side.

The second half of the film loses its way a bit, though I can’t go into too much details without spoiling the plot. Several of the first half’s intriguing ideas are abandoned. Asia Argento gives a strong performance during the second half of the film, one that features some of her bravest and most revealing work. That said, despite the strength of Asia’s performance, many of Anna’s actions still don’t make sense no matter how much the film tries to convince us that they do. That said, the final scenes still carries an impact.

In the end, the film uses Stendhal Syndrome as a gimmick. If you want to see a realistic film about Stendhal Syndrome, you’re probably out of luck because it’s not a condition that’s easy to capture cinematically. But, as a thriller, The Stendhal Syndrome holds up well. This is an uneven film but ultimately, what does work outweighs what doesn’t.