1997: The Ensemble of "Female Perversions"

We're revisiting the 1997 film year in the lead up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternatives to Oscar's ballot.

Women, amirite? You've got the unique expectations foisted upon them to perform their gender by strangers, coworkers (no matter the field), loved ones, and themselves. There’s the generational traumas, both inherited and inflicted. Not to mention the way their psychosexual hang-ups function as ungainly manifestations of their repressed selves desperately seeking some kind of release. You can try reaching out to others for help, but all you’ve really got is yourself, and who trusts that bitch?

This is the territory Female Perversions resides in...

Based on Louise J. Kaplan’s 1991 psychological study of the same name, Susan Streitfield’s film operates at the serrated edge of black comedy, feminist psychology, and fleshy arthouse erotica. Tilda Swinton’s Eve Stephens, the center of Female Perversions, is observed and acted with trapped-animal immediacy and intimidating remove, as if she’s trying to observe her own life from a distance to better understand the “right” way to be. Meanwhile, the supporting actresses are asked to embody different forms of perversion, ranging from full-fledged characters, self-aware “types”, objects of paranoid projection, and parodic embodiments of womanhood. All of them must inhabit singular tones while meshing to Stratfield’s multi-hyphenate approach to the material. The women exist in their own warped realities and as funhouse reflections of each other, and the cast rises to this unique occasion with fierce, unwavering commitment.

The first among equals in this department is Amy Madigan, whose brittleness, intelligence, and venom has never been so ideally cast. Madigan stars as Eve’s sister Madelyn, a doctoral student studying a matriarchal city in Mexico who is barely a week away from defending her dissertation. Maddie has a complicated relationship with Eve, itself part of a larger, prickly web of messy feelings and half-buried memories surrounding their father and mother. We first see her rolling a home video of herself and Evie as kids at a family pool party, failing to cut the tape with a razor before watching the projection with complete stillness. Her TV blares that Eve is in line to be a judge on the court of appeals, and after leaving a congratulatory message on Eve’s answering machine that’s at least half a reprimand for not picking up the line, Madelyn goes to let off steam the best way she knows: shoplifting.

Maddie walks into a shopping center and gazes at a rack of scarves. She gently, hungrily picks one up and rubs it against her face, inhaling its scent. As the camera zooms in, Madigan plays this action with a serene, unabashedly sexual satisfaction before discreetly putting on the garment and tucking half of it underneath her coat, as if she’d worn it into the store. The camera zooms out as an unsuspecting saleswoman asks Maddie what she’s looking for, and she gleefully pretends she’s shopping for her fashion-starved sister (“My sister’s been coveting this scarf ever since my father gave it to me”). Madigan’s underplaying makes this frank laying-out of Maddie's dysfunctional identity as funny as it is revealing. She wants her sister to be jealous of her and their father - of her father - and Eve’s professional rise threatens that. Madigan ensures Maddie is palpably aware of her own actions, of the slant she's adding versus what's actually happening as she keeps pulling shit to one-up Eve. Her sense of autonomy, paired with a surefire instinct for how to best set her own life on fire while digging her nails under her sister’s skin, makes Maddie an ideal foil to Eve and a fascinating case study in her own right.

Maddie is eventually arrested for shoplifting and held over the weekend in some podunk town that’s too party-hearty to bother filing release paperwork until Monday. Eve comes to try and get her out of prison, and Maddie spit in her face for playing savior before sheepishly accepting help. Eve shacks up at Maddie’s place, some two-story house out in the middle of the desert, to learn more about her case and help with her defense. She also gets acquainted with her sister’s weirdo roommates. There’s Emma, a lovestruck seamstress played by Laila Robbins whose devotion to matrimony has led her to exclusive style bridal dresses. The living room is overrun by mannequins in wedding dresses, and Emma herself wears an outfit that looks like a bridal gown turned into dayware. She’s hospitable enough to Eve but gets territorial around her landline, waiting for a call from a man she knows will propose this weekend.

Emma has a 13-year-old daughter Edwina, played by Dale Shuger, who goes exclusively by Ed and has forsaken as much of her femininity as possible. She exclusively wears black, chops her hair, and keeps slicing her body with scissors and sharp objects when she isn’t burying menstrual pads in the desert. Shuger unflinchingly embodies Ed’s mournful, averse attitudes, ensuring her dysphoria is heartrending rather than a series of visceral provocations. There’s also Emma’s sister Annunciata, a confident stripper played by Frances Fisher who knows exactly how to use her body to attract men. When she swoops in to babysit for a night, she coaxes Ed into a purple dress over her all-black attire. Dolled up in lingerie and fine robes, Annunciata doles out advice to Ed and Eve about the ways women can use their bodies to wield power over men as she dresses and undresses, posing for photographs she's told Ed to take. She even keeps going when Emma crawls teary-eyed through the door without a ring or a man, and consoles her sister as she fumes about his bitch wife ruining their special weekend.

Female Perversions also boasts a strong roster of one or two scene players. Paulina Porzikova shows up as a potential replacement for Eve’s current job once her judgeship is inevitably confirmed, and her business-casual chumminess viciously upsets Eve’s paranoia. Marcia Cross appears as Eve and Maddie’s mother in one sad, sexually-charged scene of violence that repeats and extends throughout the film - it’s a foundational block for Eve’s trauma, and one corner of a puzzle Female Perversions never fully reveals. Sandy Martin (Sam Rockwell’s mother in Three Billboards) gets a showcase scene as a boozy, conga-line-dancing secretary who becomes another violent mouthpiece Eve bludgeons herself with in her imagination, and Elizabeth Cava wields a very imposing stare as a cop sitting in on Eve’s visitations with Maddie. Judy Jean Berns sells a hysterical line about the prowess of a new push-up bra with wide-eyed wonder, and Shawnee Smith purrs out the name “The Red Pussycat” with sultry amusement before meowing right in Tilda Swinton’s face.

While all of this is happening, Eve begins seeing a psychiatrist named Renee, played by Karen Silas. We only see the beginnings of their first interaction, a meet-cute waiting for an elevator where Renee teasingly reveals they actually met that morning. The two dart off for drinks, and the next time we see them together Eve saunters into Renee’s office while she’s at her desk and begins ravaging her ear. Renee is by far the least neurotic character in the film, and Silas seizes the role with welcome carnality and an unblinking awareness of what staying with Eve is demanding of her. She susses out Eve’s instabilities remarkably quick, and even though the sex is incredible, Renee knows she’s walking back into a type of relationship she’s been trying to avoid - one where the things she’s given are far outstriped by the things taken from her. Silas’s lucidity and directness are as compelling as everyone else’s delusions, and given the scale of some of these delusions, that means a hell of a lot. 

Female Perversions is never better than when Streitfeld razor-sharp scene building and direction provide ample room for these brainy, resourceful actresses to personalize characters designed as concepts. If this article ultimately makes the film sound like a series of discreet, semi-connected scenarios describing weird things women do to each other and themselves, well, that’s the film. If this article ultimately reads like I’ve summarized actions and archetypes more than articulating the very peculiar achievements these performers contribute, so be it. Come for the heavy-handed but never obvious dissertation, stay for the fierce women, tight ropes, and busty chess pieces. Come for Swinton and Madigan’s layered, claws-out combativeness, stay for a tender reconciliation that feels equally like the end of a rough day and the first step in a trail both women might opt not to stay on. Come for something special.

Female Perversions can be found on DVD and some desultory corners of the internet, though it is not currently available to rent or stream on any digital platforms.

Comments

[Beau Baker]

This movie is available to watch in the UK on Prime to stream. I watched it just recently. I love just adore Tilda Swinton. I enjoyed reading this piece as helped me get a better perspective of the movie.