Perversioni femminili

This is a terrific film about women struggling to discover a way to find and develop their identity. While some of the allusions and metaphors can be a bit heavy handed, they are effective.

Eve (Tilda Swinton) is a lawyer about to be nominated for a judgeship. While her professional life is as much as she could wish, her personal life is a mess. She is involved with an architect (male) and a psychotherapist, Renee. But she is unable to connect with either. Her upbringing, devotion to her work, and desperate desire for control have left her emotionally stunted, unable to make a real connection to anyone around her.

One day, her sister is picked up for shoplifting. Eve rides to her rescue, and spends several days in the middle of nowhere, with an exotic dancer, a young girl just entering puberty, and a brilliant but shattered friend.

Many critics hated this movie (most guides give it just 2 or 3 stars) but I think they couldn't get past Eve's coldness. But this movie is a study in coldness, in emotional death and rebirth. But it is not Eve who is reborn. See it and judge for yourself.

The idea that a career driven woman finds herself disconnected from emotions, vacant in today's society, is the subject of at least one daytime television program daily. The presentation of Evelyn Stevens (Tilda Swinton, of Orlando fame) in Female Perversions, is not the sugar-coated world of The View, but a carefully crafted life-study (accurate to the minute details).

Evelyn is an attractive woman, she believes herself a beautiful one. She inappropriately wonders through a shop while trying on a revealing piece of underwear, but the only one available is a disinterested octogenarian. She is a competent attorney, yet she represents herself as a premier legal strategist. Her credit card is rejected while making the simplest of purchases, she drives a SAAB 900 Turbo-the whole thing is perfect.

Further insight to Evelyn's internal monsters are seen though the film's portrayal of her sister, Madelyn-the good soul to Evelyn's evil one. She has chosen a more bohemian existence, and calms her internal monsters through adventures in kleptomania.

Let's recap: Driven woman, faux life, dysfunctional family, bad credit cards, soon to be made a judge (with no one to tell, and no one who cares). There is only one place left for her to go.

To a deeply invested lesbian encounter. Where else can she go? Her entire life as it stands is moments from implosion. The realization that the new lawyer entering her firm (her ‘replacement') is prettier (Paulina Porizkova, no less), smarter, and likely more stable further pushes Evelyn to the inevitable.

Wonderfully cast with Amy Madigan (as the sister), Karen Sillas (as the Doctor/Lesbian love interest), and Clancy Brown (as the boyfriend) in a rarely seen beefcake role. Throw in Frances Fisher and Laila Robins for good measure.

Must for all art film fans. Highly recommended for the more mainstream tastes who like a small distraction now and then.

It seems to me that quite a lot of people really dislike this film, when in reality, it's not very warranted. Oh sure, it's very weird, sexual, very "artsy" in the way you know will annoy a quite large number of people. I found it fascinating, though. I found it unpredictable and fun (until the pretty heavy final 15 minutes) and most importantly, I was able to see the glorious, best- actress-alive Tilda Swinton in a very different sort of role, a sort of role that I had never seen her do before but which she nails. She's very seductive and cold here, very unlikable and Swinton manages to make it all work gloriously, along with an impressive Amy Madigan as the most important secondary character.

Only to be left with ambivalence - at best. Perhaps it's a product of male perversions. Despite a few Name Talents, this is undergrad neo-feminist twaddle, low budget in every respect: The staging (though there are some interesting elements to some of the sets), the tortured emotions, the music, and most of all the symbolism. Honestly, I do try to appreciate Tilda Swinton's work - and I certainly did enjoy her performance in "Michael Clayton" (as a corrupt lawyer - does she have a problem with typecasting?), but even with long hair (a definite improvement), I still find her a little repellent. I suppose if I'm to be fair I'll give it a B+ for nudity, but beyond that there really isn't anything to recommend it. Go watch "Tommy" instead if you need tales of damaged children, and at least you'll be entertained.

By now we are used to it, when sexuality is involved, the judgments are conflicting, perhaps tending towards denigration. We should reflect on this, without disturbing psychoanalysis, but it is a fact. Everything is accentuated if the topic concerns the female sexual sphere. It will also happen in 2008 with Valérie - Diary of a nymphomaniac always directed by women. Perhaps a doubt arises on the fact that perhaps women are more "capable" of tackling the subject than male directors, whose production with a porn vision borders on the ridiculous! Duty premise to talk about the film in question which is inspired by an essay by the late psychoanalyst Louise J. Kapplan Female Perversions: The Temptations of Emma Bovary. Kapplan, it should be remembered, was the leader in the 1960s, in the demand of the nascent feminist movement, for a sexuality free from the oppressive bonds of a fundamentally phallocratic society. Streitfeld made her the thesis, expressed in the essay, that female sexuality, although free to express itself, is not immune to the impulses it has to deal with. That she then succeeded in transferring this reflection into the film is a cause for debate, but we cannot deny the courage to have proposed a thorny and easy subject to criticism, and she deserves the credit for having chosen an actress like Swinton. perfect in the role. All this leads to a positive evaluation of the film, although not free from some stylistic and writing imperfections!