Mother of Tears (Italian: ; ) is a 2007 supernatural horror film written and directed by Dario Argento, and starring Asia Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Moran Atias, Udo Kier and Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni. The film has also been billed in English-speaking media as Mater Lachrymarum, The Third Mother (English translation of the film's original Italian title) and Mother of Tears: The Third Mother.
Written by Argento, Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch, the film is the concluding installment of Argento's supernatural horror trilogy The Three Mothers, preceded by Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). The film depicts the confrontation with the final "Mother" witch, known as Mater Lachrymarum.
Plot Catholic Church workers dig up the body of a 19th-century church official, whose casket has a box-shaped urn chained to it. Inside they discover artifacts of Mater Lachrymarum, the last surviving member of the Three Mothers, an ancient trio of powerful witches. The box contains a magic tunic that, when worn by Mater Lachrymarum, increases her powers significantly.
The urn is shipped to the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome, where Sarah Mandy, an American studying art restoration, works. Sarah is dating the curator Michael Pierce, a single father who is away from the museum that night. With help from the assistant curator Giselle, Sarah opens the box and finds the tunic. While Sarah is retrieving translation tools from her office, Giselle is attacked by the demonic agents of Mater Lachrymarum. Sarah returns to find Giselle disembowelled and tries to flee the museum. She is pursued by Mater Lachrymarum's familiar, but manages to escape when a disembodied voice guides her through locked doors that are magically thrown open.
Sarah tells the police what happened, then spends the night with Michael and his son. Meanwhile, in her lair, Mater Lachrymarum dons the tunic. The next day, Michael visits the Cardinal who sent the urn to the museum, but the Cardinal has had a severe stroke and is now comatose. Michael is given a message the Cardinal had been writing when he collapsed; the paper contains the scrawled name "Mater Lachrymarum." A pair of witches observe Michael as he leaves.
In Rome, chaos descends as a wave of mass suicides, murder, and violence engulfs the city. After his son is kidnapped by witches, Michael contacts Sarah. Sarah begs him to call the police, but Michael refuses and instead plans to visit a local priest who is an exorcist. En route, Michael is captured and murdered by the witches. His captive son is killed and cannibalized by the rapidly expanding coven.
As she makes her way through a train station, Sarah is spotted by a gang of witches who have arrived in Rome in order to pledge their loyalty to Mater Lachrymarum. Pursued by the witches as well as police detective Enzo Marki, Sarah escapes when the disembodied voice from before teaches her to make herself invisible.
Sarah meets Marta, a white witch and friend of Sarah's deceased mother Elisa. Marta realizes that the disembodied voice guiding Sarah is Elisa, who was herself a powerful white witch. Elisa challenged and severely wounded Mater Suspiriorum, the eldest and wisest of the Three Mothers, who retaliated by causing the crash that killed Sarah's parents. Though Mater Suspiriorum was killed by Suzy Bannion, a ballet dancer in Rome and her sister Mater Tenebrarum was killed by Mark Elliott in New York, Mater Lachrymarum aims to bring about the second age of magic, with the fall of Rome being her first goal.
Sarah returns to her home in the city but observes Mater Lachrymarum's forces waiting for her. She heads for Marta's house and discovers Marta and her lover murdered. Fleeing, Sarah spots Michael, who takes her back to his apartment. Sarah soon realizes that Michael is a corpse being animated by Mater Lachrymarum. Sarah burns Michael's animated body, and the ghost of her mother intervenes one final time to banish Michael to Hell.
Sarah locates De Witt, an alchemist whom Marta mentioned as someone who could help her against Mater Lachrymarum. De Witt gives Sarah a copy of "The Three Mothers" to read, enabling her to find Mater Lachrymarum's lair. Enzo Marki, the police detective who has been tailing Sarah, joins her to venture into the catacombs where Mater Lachrymarum's cult lurks. Enzo is separated from Sarah and captured and tortured, along with De Witt. Sarah is caught and brought before Mater Lachrymarum, who is wearing the ancient tunic. Sarah heals Enzo's wounds and uses a spear to pull the tunic off Mater Lachrymarum. She tosses the tunic into a nearby brazier, causing the lair to collapse and a pillar to impale and kill Mater Lachrymarum. With the followers crushed as the catacomb collapses, Sarah and Enzo struggle back above ground and laugh in horror and relief.
Cast Asia Argento as Sarah Mandy Cristian Solimeno as Detective Enzo Marchi Daria Nicolodi as Elisa Mandy, Sarah's deceased mother and the witch Udo Kier as Padre Johannes Moran Atias as Mater Lachrymarum Adam James as Michael Pierce Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni as Giselle Philippe Leroy as Guglielmo De Witt Valeria Cavalli as Marta, Elisa's friend and witch Clive Riche as Man in Overcoat Massimo Sarchielli as The Hobo Silvia Rubino as Elga Jun Ichikawa as Katerina Luca Pescatore as Paul Pierce
Production Pre-production The Three Mothers trilogy
Mother of Tears is the final film in Argento's trilogy known as The Three Mothers. The trilogy is loosely based on characters from "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow", a section of Thomas De Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis. The prose poem outlines the existence of three women that are the personification of sorrow: Mater Lachrymarum, Mater Suspiriorum and Mater Tenebrarum. Argento and Daria Nicolodi recast De Quincey's Three Sorrows as three malevolent witches who rule the world with tears, sighs and shadows. When released in 1977, the first film, Suspiria, introduced the major stylistic elements of the series, including the bold use of primary colors and elaborate setpieces for each murder. The sequel, Inferno, developed the overarching plot continuities concerning the three central witches when released in 1980.
Nicolodi script (1980s) As early as 1984, Daria Nicolodi asserted in an interview with Fangoria – alongside Argento – that they had "finished the script for the third [film] but there are a few things we are still working on to perfect the project, a couple of special effects and locations, that sort of thing." Although Nicolodi mentioned her version of the script again in an interview for Alan Jones' book, Profondo Argento: The Man, the Myths and the Magic, it was not used in whole or part for Mother of Tears.
Argento script (2003/4) On 29 November 2003, at the Trieste Science Plus Fiction Festival in Northern Italy, Argento revealed that he hoped to start filming The Third Mother in August 2004 and was currently working on the script. Thematically it concerned "mysticism, alchemy, terrorism and Gnosticism [...]. So many people were tortured because the Church said Gnosticism was heresy, and that will be the starting point for the story. [...] It has been over 20 years since I left the Three Mothers behind [...] and it has felt surprisingly good to go back and explore the whole story from a retrospective point of view." The film was to be set in Rome and begin with Mater Lachrymarum in the Middle Ages. Argento originally hoped to cast a Russian model in the role of Mater Lachrymarum. (He later chose Israeli actress Moran Atias.) Argento also said that a Hollywood studio might finance the film.
Anderson and Gierasch script (2005–06) In late 2005, Argento travelled to the North of Europe to begin conceptual work on The Third Mother. Soon after, it was announced that Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch had been asked by Argento to help him write the film's script. "When we got there [Rome,] Dario had already done his own pass on the treatment, and we spent three weeks holed up in an apartment, meeting with Dario, visiting the catacombs, and getting the first draft done." Around this time, Fangoria reported that the film would be entitled Mater Lachrymarum.
The script for The Third Mother was still being refined in February 2006, with Anderson and Gierasch having composed a first draft which Argento then revised. This early script began immediately after Inferno, with a witch who survived the destruction of Mater Tenebrarum's home watching a detective (Ennio Fantastichini) investigating a series of murders at a university. Other tentative cast members were Chiara Caselli as a psychiatrist, Max von Sydow as a mysterious university professor, and Giordano Petri as a young investigator who takes the case when Fantastichini's character is killed. At this point, shooting was set to begin in late spring of the same year and was to be released between November 2006 and January 2007. However, in early 2006 rumors circulated that Argento had dismissed Anderson and Gierasch after being displeased with their script. French horror magazine L'Écran Fantastique reported that Argento alone would receive a screenwriting credit. On the tenth of March it was announced that shooting The Third Mother would be delayed until September. In mid-April it was announced that Argento would return to Italy in June to immediately begin filming The Third Mother, which would be "a big budget feature, produced by Medusa along with a major American company [Myriad]." In May 2006 the title Mother of Tears surfaced as a possible name for the film. According to journalist Alan Jones, this title "was never in the running as far as Dario was concerned. That was the title the originally contacted American sales agent Myriad wanted for international distribution." In the same month, rumors from the Cannes Film Festival linked actress Sienna Miller to the film's lead female role. Also at Cannes, Medusa's CEO Giampaolo Letta was quoted by Anderson and Gierasch as saying "This is going to be vintage Argento. Pretty strong stuff." In July it was revealed that The Third Mother had been delayed yet again until "next November or later" and that Argento's daughter, Asia, had been cast in the film.
Filming
In mid-October 2006, Gierasch revealed that The Third Mother would begin filming later in the month. Primary filming occurred in Rome, although some parts were filmed in Turin and at the Cinecittà studios in Terni.
Post-production The editing of Mother of Tears was more or less finished by March 2007. Dubbing the soundtrack into the Italian and English language versions of the film was finished on 5 April 2007.
The film's digital effects were created by Lee Wilson and Sergio Stivaletti. According to the director of photography, Frederic Fasano, the film will begin with a subdued cool color palette that will segue to red as the film progresses.
The Italian distributor of Mother of Tears, Medusa Film, believed the film was too violent and requested it to be edited. Medusa's main objection is to "the depiction of perverse sex in the witch gathering satanic scenes and one cannibal killing of a major character." Argento was asked to re-edit the film to make it more mainstream. It was confirmed on 28 May 2007 that the film would receive a rating of 14 in Italy, necessitating the removal of "all hardcore gore" which would later "be re-instated for the dvd release".
Promotion