Naked Ambition  Asia Argento's Scarlet Diva is not what you'd
expect of a writing-directing debut by an internationally adored
movie starlet, but it's exactly the feverish spew you might
anticipate from Dario's daughter: indulgent, masochistic, brave,
and go-for-broke. Indeed, having starred in several of her
father's iron maidens, the brooding, swollen-eyed Argento may be
world cinema's premier gamine victim, but now she's become her
own persecutrix. Scarlet Diva is '60s-style lurid-and-cool,
executed with unmistakable need. The movie's seemingly artless
title corresponds to its triple-threat self-flagellation, an
organic spectacle of subjective ordeal in which the 26-year-old
star splays herself across the bloodied altar of international
show business and fame-privilege backdraft.   The achieved tone
is both farcical and self-destructive. However generally
autobiographical the film is, the detailed excursions into
absurdity seem too arbitrary to be pure fiction, particularly
when Anna rescues a battered gir