Dressed to Kill (1980)

	Also Known As: Pulsions (French)
	Year of first release: 1980
	Director: Brian de Palma (Scarface, Carrie)
	Actors: Michael Caine (Zulu, Harry Brown), Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen (Blow Out, Robocop), Keith Gordon (Christine)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 03.11.2013, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: A mysterious, tall blonde woman, wearing dark sunglasses murders one of a psychiatrist (Caine)'s patients (Dickinson), and now she goes after the high-priced call girl (Allen) who witnessed the murder.
Review: I wanted to discover Brian de Palma's golden age, that is his movies from the 70's - 80's, so I started by watching Blow Out (reviewed here) which I liked but no more than that. Dressed to Kill is the movie he made just before and was already featuring Nancy Allen. There are so many kinds of perversion and fetichism in this movie that I lost count: unfaithful middle aged woman, a one-afternoon-stand met at a museum, leather gloves and clothes, a razor, a hooker and a teenager, mirrors, transvestites... This may be the best of De Palma's. All the characters have their own background story that makes them interesting. All the actors are excellent. I had never seen the movie and didn't know where it was going so I had excellent surprises all along, discovering the events and the character's reactions. And the direction is a lesson of cinema, for example the museum scene at the beginning, a wordless hide-and-seek game between the character of Angie Dickinson and her future lover. The elevator scene is also beautifully done and plays with your nerves. Those two scenes are said to be largely inspired (copied) from Hitchcock. It is true that the master of suspense had a large influence on De Palma, but when watching the interview of Keith Gordon you learn that De Palma did much more than a copy: he followed Hitchcock rules but included his own sensitivity and created a contemporary story that was edging the limits of what could be shown at that time, especially in terms of sexual behaviors. The French Blu-ray edition is of excellent quality (image and sound) and proposes several interesting interviews (Angie Dickinson, Keith Gordon...).I am now very tempted to watch some other of his movies like Obsession or Body Double (this one unfortunately not yet available in Blu-ray).
Rating: 10 /10