I Watch Films: Female Perversions

 

Female Perversions

“For a woman ... to explore and express the fullness of her sexuality, her ambitions, her emotional and intellectual capacities, her social duties, her tender virtues, would entail who knows what risks and who knows what truly revolutionary alteration to the social conditions that demean and constrain her. Or she may go on trying to fit herself into the order of the world and thereby consign herself forever to the bondage of some stereotype of normal femininity - a perversion, if you will.”

Eve is a hotshot lawyer, but is also desperately insecure. This despite her having hot sex with her hotshot geologist boyfriend and being tipped to be appointed a judge by the governor. She’s preparing for this, but disconcerted by her boss interviewing a replacement for her, another version of herself. She also begins an affair with a female psychiatrist who has taken an office down the hall.

She’s pulled out of her home in Los Angeles when her sister Maddie, preparing to defend her doctoral thesis, is arrested for shoplifting. Despite her best efforts she can’t get her out of jail over the weekend so stays in her room out in the desert town overnight. There she meets the women who live in the set of rooms, owned by a dressmaker with a daughter called Ed who dresses and acts very boyishly.

Eve brings her sister back to LA for her thesis defence, only to find she’s taken Eve’s lucky suit so she has to go to her interview with the governor in another. There she talks disconcertingly about not being a family woman. This links back to Maddie and Eve’s memories and conversations about their family, and the strange disinterest of their father on the phone. The two come to the realisation that this has warped their lives, and Eve also recognises that Ed is self-harming and goes to find her when she vanishes.

The film talks some big talk with the quotes (from the book it’s based on, one of which I've put up the top of this) about how women are forced to take risks or force themselves to fit society and does manage to demonstrate that. On the other hand it’s an erotic drama about a lawyer having sex with a couple of hot people and arguing with her sister. Can it live up to it’s own standards? No, I don't think it can, though I must credit it with an attempt to engage with the questions it raises.

Watch This: Stylish erotic drama of the 90s about women trying to be themselves and grow out from under the shade of their father
Don’t Watch This: Shagging and shopping