Variety

Variety was shot on the super-cheap on the streets of midtown NYC in 1983, which is for a short while part of its not exactly charm but precise and evocative mood. This is a Times Square that most wont recognize since the clean-up in recent years; it's dirty, loaded with porno theaters and video stores, and with some exceptions (like the Variety movie theater boss played by Luis Guzman) there's no lack of sleazy males. In this movie the main character, Christine (Sandy McLeod) seems to be a fairly normal girl just looking for a job and finds one at Jose's Variety theater at the ticket window. Little by little she becomes intrigued by the porno movies playing and by a mysterious gentlemen caller (Richard Davidson) who takes her out on a bum date to Yankee stadium, stranding her up as he just 'goes away' on some urgent matter.

What follows is a series of scenes of her following him around- even going as far as to the Jersey shore where he does some mysterious "business" shaking hands with people outside of amusement parks- and little by little she sinks further into this porno-type of funk, like a misguided femme fatale sitting in her room and playing 45's in sultry clothes and purple lighting. Some of this sounds interesting because it is - Bette Gordon has a point to make here on the feminine condition in an Urban setting, kind of like a Taxi Driver only replacing the guns with more of the porn, and there are some effective scenes early on showing McLeod surrounded by this creepy but intriguing setting.

But there's also passages that, I hate to admit, were just too dull to really be engaged. She follows this man to a fish market, and then we're treated to lots and lots of footage of fish and the like. Why? What does this really add to the atmosphere? It's like Gordon doesn't always know if she wants to make a neo-noir or a documentary, and the shuffle between the two forms (both engaging on their own) becomes confused. I also didn't care for those passages where Christine gives those ridiculously detailed descriptions/synopses of the porno movies she sees to her exasperated boyfriend (Will Patton), and McLeod in these scenes reaches her most annoying points. She's not a terrible actress throughout, but here she sounds like she's reciting remembered lines as opposed to acting, and one sympathizes with what Mark has to put up with. We're putting up with it too.

There is a reason this has something of a very minor cult status, and that it even got Bette Gordon a re-release screening at the Tribeca film festival this year. It's very much a New York movie, made on the dirty streets, meant to capture that dingy side and to give some kind of naturalistic feeling of a strange woman in this environment. But its own mystery undercuts itself. Variety would work far better, maybe even be truly great, as a short film. At 100 minutes, for all of its little moments of pleasure (i.e. when Chrisitne imagines herself up on the screen in a room with the enigmatic criminal Louie) and John Lurie's intoxicating jazz, it's too long and too unfocused for what works well to really strike it home. Luis Guzman steals the show.

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.

When adult theaters such as the one profiled in this film were prolific, feminist activists would lead tours of Times Square to bring attention to their cause.

The main character's regular and extensive swimming exercise is a good analogy for the pace of the film. Steady, slow, heavy.

One amusing note, when our heroine follows her mystery man who has just taken a cab, she jumps into another cab, the sax is on the soundtrack, no dialouge, but you can read her lips: "Follow that Cab!"

It's also ironic that she follows him to the Fulton Street Fish Market, which in real life became the focus of an extensive organized crime probe.

I understand the feminist perspective in this film, but since it's virtually plotless and entirely too long, it ends up being a snooze fest. Scenes in which nothing happens go on for five minutes or longer. Some of the camera work is good, and it's interesting to see the old trashy Times Square of the 80's. But if this is supposed to be a message film, it's too static and boring to make the audience receptive.