Désir de femme

Woman of Desire (1993)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

After the success of BASIC INSTINCT erotic-thrillers were turning up every few weeks. They ranged from some good knock-offs to downright horrid pieces of trash. This one here is a pretty bad movie but there are enough campy moments and the cast is attractive enough to make it hard to turn off. Captain Jack Lynch (Jeff Fahey) washes on shore saying that his boss (Steven Bauer) fell overboard during a storm. The boss has a wife (Bo Derek) who claims that Jack shot her husband and then raped her but Jack claims he's innocent and had been carrying on an affair with the wife. If you're looking for an actual plot your not going to find much of one here as there are enough plot holes here that one will question if a few first-graders didn't right this thing. As is to be expected, Derek plays the beautiful blonde who might not be a very good person as she is constantly sleeping with various men and she might have a few reasons as to why she'd want to see her husband dead. It will come as no shock that Derek doesn't give that much of a performance but she certainly looks extremely good here at the age of 37. She's clearly not here for her acting but for her sex appeal and she has quite a bit of that. She has quite a few nude scenes and there's no denying that she looks wonderful and this is the main reason people are going to be checking this out and have been checking it out since it's constant plays on Cinemax throughout the late-night hours. Fahey has always been a favorite of mine and his presence here gave the film some added value even though he's not overly good either. The big shock is that Robert Mitchum plays his lawyer here and actually gets a lot of screen time. This here certainly isn't a classic performance but it was fun seeing him in this type of role and he clearly gives the best performance of the bunch. It's pretty hard to take the film serious because there are just so many bad things. The direction is pretty poor, the music is horrid and even the editing looks very cheap. The dialogue is extremely bad and the courtroom scenes are rather embarrassing. With that said, with Derek looking as great as she does and the other campy values, if you're a fan of bad movies then this one here is worth watching.

For a trip to South Africa and a hefty paycheck the four principal players all American did Woman Of Desire. Heading the cast was that most desirable of women Bo Derek playing a Paris Hilton type who has two brothers played by Steven Bauer and Jeff Fahey panting hot and heavy after her. One fine day on the yacht that's captained by Jeff Fahey, but owned by the brothers Bauer, one of the brothers goes overboard in a storm. So does Fahey who's is found nude and alive on a beach. Derek says he killed the one brother, the one she's married to.

Bo's quite the party animal so she's not necessarily believed, but Fahey is not a sterling character either. So there is an inquest and Fahey gets Robert Mitchum to be his lawyer.

According to Lee Server's biography of Mitchum, Woman Of Desire was part of a package deal he owed the producers of African Skies, a short lived television series he did a couple of years back. So to fulfill contractual obligations and I believe to get to play a few courtroom scenes to round out his career, Mitchum did this film. His famous old rumple eyes barely registered at all, but he still outclassed the cast except when Bo Derek was running around topless.

Everyone here has the satisfied look of folks when a large paycheck cleared. Nothing to write home about. In fact with the film shot in South Africa it seems more to be located in the Caribbean. Yet the official police and courtroom parts are clearly South African. No accents from that country though. It's all kind of weird.

If you are like any good, red-blooded, heterosexual American male, you probably just wanted to check out Bo's bo-dacious body--She delivers probably her best on screen nudity in this one, including a pretty heavy sex scene on a motorcycle. You definitely won't be disappointed!

But if you go off "fast forward" and hit the normal speed "play" button, you find that this is a really engaging, entangled ball of yarn that will keep you guessing until *after* the end. I have seen it a couple of times, and I still don't know, besides Bo, who was in on the caper.

This film really delivers on the sexy film noir.

This was a pretty sad piece of work. All it is is another vehicle for Bb Drek to show off her tremendous body (and face). The acting is terrible in here and the story is muddled. Frankly, it's not much more than a soft-porn flick.

What's disappointing is an actor of Robert Mitchum's status to stoop to this level. Yeah, and he acted poorly, too. If I didn't know it was him, I would have thought it was some amateur thespian. He, and the guy who played the police chief, sounded like they were just reading their lines. Jeff Fahey is the only actor who sounds like he knows (or cares) what he's doing.

Derek is nice to ogle in her steamy scenes but this is a horrible movie.

Apart from "10", the career of actress Bo Derek is essentially one terrible film after another...most of which seem to include her taking off her clothes. Among her infamous appearances, along with their current IMDB scores, are "Tarzan the Ape Man" (3.4), "Bolero" (3.0), "Ghosts Can't Do It" (2.2), "The Master of Disguise" (3.4), "Boom" (2.3), "Sunstorm" (3.5) and "Orca" (5.8). While possibly not the worst actress of all time, she certainly is in the running. Now the odd thing about all this is that in several films, very well respected actors appeared in these films...such as Anthony Quinn in "Ghosts Can't Do It", George Kennedy in "Bolero" and "Woman of Desire" with Robert Mitchum.

The story begins with a twist. There's a nude person lying on the beach (no surprise) but it's NOT Bo ( a BIG surprise). It happens to be the captain of a yacht who claims he was washed overboard. However, he's shocked to hear that the woman aboard the boat, Christina (Derek), claims he raped her and murdered her husband. The film is about the investigation and court hearing to determine exactly what really happened.

As I mention in the summary, Robert Mitchum is one of the stars in this film. Now considering how well respected an actor he was AND how bad Derek's reputation was, you wonder why he wanted to make the film in the first place. I can only assume it was all about the money. Thank goodness for small favors that at least he keeps his clothes on during the film considering he was 76 in 1994.

So, despite a lot of very gratuitous nudity, is this film watchable? Note that I am not saying is it good but is it watchable. Well, not really. While this film is supposed to be about rape and murder, throughout the course of the film you keep seeing flashback after flashback with Bo getting naked! It really cheapens the notion of rape...almost making it seem sexy...which is just disgusting. And, the acting and writing in between is not especially good. Frankly, why not just make a porno film and skip all the stupid dialog and plot? So what this means is that if you want a good story, look elsewhere. And, if you want good porn, you can probably find a lot better and a bit more explicit on the internet.

By the way, despite this being a bad film, Mitchum, despite badly choosing to be in the movie, is pretty good.