Variety

Christine (Sandy McCloud) is desperate for employment to the point where she accepts work selling tickets at a porno theatre off of Times Square. As expected some customers give off a creepy aura, though she accepts the invitation of one well heeled, mysterious gent's invite to a game at Yankee Stadium. The porno theatre environment meanwhile begins to have an effect on her, disturbing her boyfriend and spurring her to stalk the mystery man.

Variety is a lurid crock in search of an edge, but it's all location, location, location under neon on 48th street with a cast, crew and script ill prepared to mount a production. Most of the performers sleepwalk through their roles with McCloud's dense and dull lead insipidly gullible, her tailing skills amateurly obvious.

Bette Gordon's direction falters in nearly every department with anemic performances, disjointed storyline, overlong scenes and sloppy camerawork while talking dirty to you. Pounding her misandrist theme home she does offer up some provocative anecdotes from some minor players who look and sound like they've been around the block but with the leaden and lifeless McCloud in the lead Variety becomes an ordeal made to endure. A complete waste of time.

Bette Gordon's independent psychological thriller, written by feminist superheroine Kathy Acker, is a stunning noir experiment set in the sex shops of 1983 Times Square. A signifcant film about sexual difference, desire, and gaze. Watch it. And be sure to pay attention to the scenery of 1983 Times Square. It's a different world, aeons ago.

The combination of Kathy Acker as writer and Bette Gordon as director should have signaled a potent brew, but sadly what we get here is a brilliant idea cut down savagely by the film's low-budget budget. Tracing the seedy, crime-ridden porn theater world of Times Square in the early 80s from a what was a post-feminist perspective should have pushed the boundaries of what could be explored in feminist cinema but here the effect is to disengage the viewer from the convoluted action. Every technical aspect from the sound to the acting feels shabby and weak and frankly underwhelming but there is an underground post-Factory (Warhol not WalMart) passion at work that just about saves this oddity. Acker's polemical script presents feminist intervention/investment in the patriarchal world of pornography with some gusto and ambiguity at times but eventually the direction dilutes itself in a haze of revisionist sexual politics, thanks to the inconsequential scripting and unfocused lensing.

i had seen this film when first released in early 85. though the pacing is slow and deliberate i find myself hypnotically fastened to the visuals aided by a good john lurie score.

this is one of the few films i've seen where the long lingering visuals (fulton fish market scene,etc),in its unflattering documentation of a bygone nyc era, actually adds the sense of smell to picture. i could actually taste/smell times square while watching.

there has been enough written about the plot/theme in others comments. though i find it an ambiguous film in that the character of christine's awakening of alternative sexual desires seems to leave her more frustrated than fulfilled.

the pacing reminds me in a good way of wim wenders early b&w dramas.

could someone please inform me though if that British accented woman at the bar is an uncredited gina birch of The Raincoats??

i grew up during that period in manhattan, especially around the sleaze of times square. so i may be simply nostalgic in an odd sense when i watch the film.

There is no doubt that feminism is what holds this movie together.

Bette Gordon made this movie in the height of the feminist debate over pornography. She doesn't endorse or condemn porn in this movie.

"Variety" depicts a woman who uses porn as a tool of self-exploration.

The movie is also a spoof of film noir. Gordon has fun with the genre by changing the sex of the main character to female. She lets her heroine play the amateur sleuth, which is traditionally a male character.

Unlike many genre movies in which women are terrorized, there is no victim in "Variety." Gordon contends that pornography doesn't necessarily make women victims. It is so refreshing that Gordon never puts her heroine at the site of male violence.

Gordon succeeds in keeping the viewer in suspense till the very end of the movie.