Model by Day

Pret a Porter meets Barb Wire in this good-looking but rather tiresome thriller based around the fashion industry. Goldeneye's Famke Janssen is superb (but wasted) as the eponymous heroine, who seeks vengeance after her flatmate is maimed. Yes she is a model by day and an angel of vengeance by night who looks absurd in purple underwear and crash helmet. Great photography but a laughable script, poor Basic Instinct-type interrogation scene and occasional nudity can't save this from the bargain bin. Janssen fans be warned.

Despite the credits proclaiming otherwise, this film was almost certainly written, cast, lit, filmed, scored and edited by a fourteen-year-old boy. No other excuse exists. The crash helmet is the killer costume addition. Sure, it's got eye candy. However, Famke Janssen was just starting to get a foot in Hollywood's door then and can be forgiven. Sean Young, on the other hand, can't. Shannon Tweed has been happily knocking out rubbish like this for ever so there's no change for her. Imagine a really poor pilot episode for some awful new Saturday afternoon series for teens. Then imagine switching on to it when it's halfway through. That's what it's like to watch this from the beginning.

"Model By Day" is not a very good movie: it's clumsily directed, poorly scripted (who could the "mystery opponent" be? Hmmm, look at the cast), the editing is a disaster, roughly 70% of the action appears to have been performed by stunt doubles, and the cinematography is annoyingly soft-focus. What it does offer, however, is Famke Janssen, one of the sexiest actresses alive in my opinion, in a leather outfit and butt-kicking mode. This movie was made one year before "Goldeneye", and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the people who picked her for the role of Xenia Onatopp had seen her here first: those eyes...those legs...that attitude...and ESPECIALLY that biting of her lower lip that she does so often...watch this movie if only to see her. It also probably served as an inspiration for "Black Scorpion" from 1995 and the subsequent TV series of the same name. (**)

For the purist, this one shouldn't be considered as a super heroine but like a basic masked vigilante (she has no super powers). So maybe Famke's charm and kick skills can do the trick for a few minutes but honestly after nearly one hour i was just terribly bored... Loeb may be an award winning comics book writer, here he just tells nothing: sure the movie is funky and colored as it's about fashion, spotlight and nightclubs but the action and characters are totally forgettable! I'm sure that even the comics are more dynamic than this dreadful stinker!

Perhaps it's because I started watching this right after finishing Donald G. Jackson's "Yin Yang Insane" (possibly the most unwatchable film I've encountered thus far), but I actually found this schlocky Famke Janssen superhero flick rather enjoyable. Janssen stars as Lex, a mega-famous supermodel/tae kwon do blackbelt who starts dishing out vigilante justice after a model friend gets carjacked in the park by a couple of Canadian thugs. Lex, donning an outfit that looks like if The Phantom was kinda kinky, becomes Lady X by night, delivering flurries of high-kicks to mustachioed minions of evil. Basically every superhero cliché ensues: Lex falls for the lieutenant assigned to tracking down Lady X; Lady X is framed by a copycat; mobsters want her dead; etc, but that doesn't really hinder the fun. For one thing, the art direction by Linda del Rosario and Richard Paris is really fantastic, featuring all sorts of early-90s (late-)postmodern / post-Memphis design quirks, so if you love postmodern design in films this is a pretty good one to check out. I especially loved Lex's apartment with the freestanding glass shelves, curly red accent chairs and wacky sculptures. Somewhat later in the film is an action piece that takes place in a dim sum restaurant that seems to be doubling as a warehouse for over-sized carnival decorations. It's the type of place the Joker would lure Batman to for a particularly creepy showdown. There's also a really great club scene featuring lots of chain-link fences (you always see this in movie clubs, but never in real life!), chandeliers, strobe-lights, and flaming cars.... yep! They are using flaming cars as ambient lighting. Definitely one of the most insane clubs I've ever seen in a movie. Additionally, there is one quick scene where Lex visits a friend in the hospital, and the room is conspicuously all-white, employing that creepy variety of post-modern design usually relegated to dream sequences and the like. I unfortunately can't think of another good cinematic example (maybe Closet Land?), but I like this somewhat rare aesthetic and wish the scene went on longer.

Being a film set in the world of fashion, there are some good wacky outfits too. Maybe a little underwhelming considering how wild they could have gotten, but Sean Young in particular rocks two crazy get-ups during the film. I actually can't remember the point of her character (plot-wise) but her wardrobe is memorable.

Besides being visually exciting, the music is charming too, especially if you have a soft-spot for really cornball early-90s music like I do. The club scene features a Flamenco-infused Euro-house jam, for example. There's a slightly Balearic track during a ridiculous scene in Beirut (which is derailed by a belligerent German tourist). Other songs feature pan-flutes. You get the idea.

Another reason this film is fun is because although it is set in New York, it was filmed in Toronto. As someone who loves goofy action and sci-fi movies from the 80s and 90s, I've developed a bizarre taste for Canadian-shot films. (For a good primer on these, check out Roddy Piper's films, or anything featuring the Twin Dragons.) I'm not sure if it's just the movies I'm watching, but Toronto seems to have a wealth of fun postmodern architecture (check out the background of Lex's date scene). The best parts of Canadian films are the villains and the extras. Unlike the intense, musclebound American heavies that hang around villains' lairs in, say, NYC, Canadian heavies are typically short, stocky middle-aged men with bad haircuts and facial hair. Not really strong-looking, just sorta thick. Hockey fans, I guess. Canadian street thugs also crack me up. They always have perfect grammar and no accents. Whenever they deliver profanity it always sounds forced, so you can tell they were probably raised in nice polite Canadian families.

I suppose I'll also mention the T&A which many other reviewers seem to latch onto immediately. There is no shortage of attractive women in the film, but much of the actual nudity seemed a bit out of place, and thus the film does teeter queasily between vaguely feminist (in a moderate-yet-butt-kicking kinda way) and all-out lecherous. It's the kind of film that could have been PG were it not for scenes randomly taking place in changing rooms. Still, it's not the kind of "let's discuss this in the hot tub" variety of titillation found in lesser films. So, in summary, if you are expecting The Dark Knight or something, you'll be sorely disappointed, but this silly, colorful romp should appease random VHS collectors, "bad movie" enthusiasts and design dorks.