Hot on Arrival

Boarding Gate, like Demonlover, is a nastier version of Irma Vep, protesting without much conviction a world that the filmmaker clearly enjoys. A few Boarding Gate defenders have observed that, as pulp heroines go, Argento is far more compelling than Chung. True enough: Chung is playing a movie star in Irma Vep; Argento, as she performs in Boarding Gate, is a star — although, with her piercing Bette Davis eyes and perpetual pouting smirk, she's also a look. There hasn't been so insolent a bad girl since the late–'70s punk queen Lydia Lunch, nor so bizarre a femme fatale since the prehumanitarian Angelina Jolie. Argento is a nexus of contradiction. She's a creature of premeditated instinct, a submissive dominatrix, at once abased and triumphant.