BASIC INSTINCT
[**Spoilers**]
A film review by Michelle L. Zafron
Copyright 1992 Michelle L. Zafron
Spoilers follow:
Okay, now maybe it's me, maybe I've just seen too many movies. But, there were no surprises in the plot for me. I knew right off that the shrink was implicated somehow. I came up with two scenarios about fifteen minutes into the film: 1) Catherine did it or 2) the shrink did it. About an hour or so into the film I decided that they were both guilty.
What totally amazed me was the feeling of utter detachment I had during this movie. I was watching carefully but remained completely uninvolved. Occasionally, I got annoyed at blatant attempts at manipulation, but that was about it. But when I left the theater, these incredible feelings of revulsion swept over me. I am ashamed to have paid money to see this movie.
The supporting cast was easily the best thing about the film. But most of them were actors who we've all seen before--they do good solid work and that's it. Michael Douglas was doing the performance from FATAL ATTRACTION. It was essentially the same type of character, but I would have enjoyed seeing some differentiation. Sharon Stone--really didn't impress me too much, but then her character was supposed to be enigmatic so I suppose that explains the lack of depth. The actress playing her lover, Roxy, impressed me far more.
One of the few posts still in the system here about the film mentioned the music favorably. Was it me or did the Jerry Goldsmith score blatantly borrow from Bernard Herrmann?
And let's talk about the Hitchcockian ripoffs...excuse me...homages. It was kind of cute to see Sharon Stone modelling Kim Novak's French twist from VERTIGO, so was the San Francisco setting. I even liked the opening crane shots. But the film didn't just make a couple of inside references to Hitchcock --they borrowed shamelessly and that bugged me.
The film has also given homophobic movements an incredible boost by portraying homosexuality as aberrant and dangerous, but I'm not going to get into this now.
The sex scenes were boring. A lot of you are probably falling off your seats at this, but after the first couple of minutes, I started thinking things like "Man, she must have a great set of boxsprings on that bed." Somehow, I doubt that Mr. Verhoeven intended me to feel that way. The nudity didn't bother me, it just bored me (and by the way, how come we never see male frontal nudity for more than a couple of seconds? I'm not particularly anxious to see this, but I'm curious as to why we don't). Then of course there was the scene in the interrogation room where we learn that like the late Tallulah Bankhead, Catherine does not wear undies. My first thought was "doesn't San Francisco get pretty cold?" Less was definitely not more in this case.
These are all pretty cosmetic criticisms, upon reflection, I think I hated the movie because the character of Catherine was the perverted fantasy of the ice queen who blows hot and cold and remains in control of her emotions throughout. The kind of woman who "deserves" to be hurt. That is wrong.
Every woman in that film came across as either perverted and homicidal. While the only normal, healthy character in the film was the partner, the women came off far worse then the men. The men were portrayed as crude, stupid, sexist authority figures who thought with their primary sex organs, but they were not, for the most part portrayed as being dangerous or deadly. The women were these terrible creatures who looked normal (the ex-con as played by Dorothy Malone--a devoted wife and mother who went crazy) or who occupied positions of wealth and influence (Catherine and the shrink) and who are ultimately deadly creatures.
Sorry for going on so long about the film...
--Michelle L. Zafron (v101pyrw@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu)
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews