Christine (1983)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1983
	Director: John Carpenter (The Thing, Dark Star, In the Mouth of Madness)
	Actors:  Keith Gordon (Dressed to Kill), John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul (Baywatch TV-series)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Thriller, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 06.07.2016, Cinema Bio, NIFFF2016
Synopsis: Arnie Cunningham (Gordon) is a young kid successful at school. His relationship with the girls, his best friend Dennis (Stockwell) and his parents will change when he enterprises to renovate the wreck of a red 1958 car.
Review: I couldn't resist watching at least one movie from John Carpenter shown at the NIFFF2016 in a retrospective in his honor, although I own them in DVD/Bluray and have already seen them all. The movie was introduced by Jean-Baptiste Thoret who wrote among others Mythes et Masques : les fantômes de John Carpenter, a book probably worth reading if you are a Carpenter fan like me. He placed the genesis of the movie in its context, at a time when adaptations of Stephen King for the cinema were numerous, and John Carpenter was trying to earn back the favor of the studios after the failure of The Thing (now considered a cult masterpiece). Thus Carpenter was supposed to deliver a faithful adaptation, while in fact the first half of the movie doesn't show any of the gruesome deaths that the audience would go to see one of his moves for. Instead we get to see the slow evolution of the teenager increasingly obsessed by that car, and how this evolution impacts his relationship with his best friend, makes him turn against his parents and on the other hand gives him the courage to talk to girls. As a fan of Carpenter's way of directing and framing his shots, I love watching Christine. I cannot criticize anything about the way the movie is shot: Carpenter is able to convey so much meaning with a single shot, be it of a car in a driveway, or of the face of a character. Talking about that, Keith Gordon is excellent in this movie, as much as he is in Dressed to Kill. In fact for me the three main interests in this movie are in that order: Carpenter's direction, the character played by Keith Gordon and the personality of the car. I don't find the other actors or the horror parts to be the most interesting. Christine may not be my favorite movie by Carpenter but I hold it nonetheless in very high esteem.
Rating: 8 /10