FEMALE PERVERSIONS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(October) Starring: Tilda Swinton, Amy Madigan, Karen Sillas, Laila Robins, Dale Shuger, Paulina Porizkova, Clancy Brown. Screenplay: Susan Streitfeld and Julie Hebert. Producer: Mindy Affrime. Director: Susan Streitfeld. MPAA Rating: R (nudity, sexual situations, adult themes, profanity) Running Time: 115 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Some people have facial features which seem to come from another era; Tilda Swinton has features from another world. Her almost translucent skin, high cheekbones and wide blue eyes conspire to give her a faintly alien appearance, intelligent and curious but isolated. Those striking, androgynous features made her perfect for the gender-bending title role in 1993's ORLANDO. In a different way, they also make her perfect for the role of FEMALE PERVERSIONS' protagonist Eve Stephens. In Susan Streitfeld's compelling character study, Eve's psyche becomes the battleground between a hundred different social images of womanhood. Watching that battle in Swinton's face is, quite simply, electrifying.
Eve is an up-and-coming Southern California prosecutor, up-and-coming enough that the governor is considering her for a seat on the Court of Appeals. An impending judgeship should make Eve a very confident woman, but instability seems to define every aspect of her life. She carries on sexual relationships simultaneously with a man (Clancy Brown) and a woman (Karen Sillas); a strained relationship with her sister Madelyne (Amy Madigan) becomes even more complicated when Madelyne is arrested for shoplifting. As her interview with the governor approaches, Eve is forced to confront insecurities inspired by years of mixed messages about what it means to be a woman.
FEMALE PERVERSIONS takes its title the non-fiction text by Dr. Louise J. Kaplan in which she defines "perversions" as deviations from strict societal proscriptions on female behavior, sexuality and fantasy. It's a great jumping-off point for a sociological study of modern American femininity, but Streitfeld shows a peculiar and ill-advised devotion to her source. The film's most awkward conceit involves the periodic appearance of quotes from the book in odd locations -- embroidered into pillow-cases, as advertising on billboards and in magazines -- offering modestly insightful epigrams like "Perverse scenarios are about desperate need." It's a Peter Greenaway type of stunt from a rookie director (Streitfeld is a rehabilitated...sorry, _retired_ Hollywood agent) which tosses generalities into the path of individual characters.
Those characters, and Eve's interactions with them, really are the "plot" of FEMALE PERVERSIONS. Each one feels like something which began as a case study but grew into a unique and fully-realized individual. Madelyne's landlady Emma, who is obsessed with getting her latest boyfriend to marry her, is played with a heartbreaking desperation by Laila Robbins; Frances Fisher turns Emma's sister Annunciata into a tutor in sexual manipulation; Emma's pubescent daughter Edwina (Dale Shuger) is so terrified of her impending sexuality that she chops off her hair and hides her body in baggy clothes. The performances -- by Amy Madigan, Karen Sillas, even Paulina Porizkova -- are uniformly superb, taking snapshots of different women coping with life and giving them unexpected vitality.
We see them all through Eve's eyes, eyes which watch herself in a news conference after winning a big case and can only see the lipstick smeared on her teeth. Swinton takes on the incredibly challenging role of a woman living multiple lives -- she has to seem plausible as a competent and effective professional who exposes herself in her lover's office, and who flies into a disgusted rage at her fumbled response to an interview question about her marital status. Over the course of FEMALE PERVERSION, Eve's confidence waxes and wanes, her remarkable face alternately displaying confidence and deep feelings of inadequacy about her physical appearance. It is a performance so rich and detailed that it feels like part of a documentary.
Streitfeld stumbles when she reduces Eve's complex psychology to the result of one childhood trauma. FEMALE PERVERSION is about much more than one woman's issues with Mommy and Daddy; Eve's story deals with the state of being a woman as much as it deals with a specific woman. Give credit to Tilda Swinton for bringing life to an archetype, for giving a face to the struggles of modern women. And what a face it is.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 feminine mystiques: 8.
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