Female Trouble

This is John Waters at his zenith. In ten minutes time this film has more hilarious, outrageous humor than most other underground, drive in films do in their entirety. Like with PINK FLAMINGOES it deserves accolades for it's sheer tasteless audacity. It is consistently funny, unrelentingly perverse, obnoxious, and ugly. Just like you would expect. It also has Waters film trademark of having the actors shout their lines instead of saying them.

This is much more of a solid satire than many may originally presume. In some ways it was way ahead of it's time. It keenly shows the cult of celebrity and the desperation some have to obtain it. How skewered the famous and infamous have become and our over emphasis on beauty. It also shows how the media exploits the desperate and causes the distorted image.

Above all though this is really Divine's vehicle. She (he) steals every scene she is in. Even just watching her do modeling poses or dancing on a bar top is hilarious. She also writes and performs the opening song and even plays a male character that has sex with her female character (very well edited). There's also one inglorious moment where you even see the close up of his genitals.

For those with the right mentality this is pure entertainment. It's also has a perverse brilliance that has lost non of it's edge of potency.

8 out of 10

Although John Waters is best known for "Pink Flamingos", his two best films are "Female Trouble" and "Desperate Living". Why? Well, as far as "Female Trouble" is concerned, it is the film that invented Dawn Davenport (Divine), one of the trashiest white schoolgirl tramps ever to strut her stuff in a pair of cha-cha heels. Dawn's amazing life is documented in this film and it's a cracker from beginning to end. You will laugh, you will cry, you will vomit and you will die as you behold the deliciously disgraceful antics of the indefatigable queen of crime and sleaze.

All the delightful Waters regulars (the achingly gorgeous Edith Massey, the fantastically filthy David Lochary, the marvellous Mink Stole and the putrid Ms. Mary Vivian Pearce) are paraded about like proud circus exhibits as Waters' weaves a rags to bitches story of one woman's rise from the suburbs of Baltimore to her fall in a city without pity.

Certainly this was one of the first films to explore the issue of criminals becoming celebrities. Dawn Davenport's ascent to the ceiling of crime is hilarious and perceptive and Waters clearly knew where all this was going. For mine, Waters lost his zing after "Desperate Living" when his movies got softer and his characters started turning up on TV shows like "Wally George", "Jerry Springer" and the earlier "Oprah" eps. What was fresh when Waters started doing it felt redundant when he kept doing it into the eighties and nineties.

Divine is, was and always will be a legend, and I consider myself fortunate that I once spent half an hour chatting with the great man and actor. Vincent Peranio's production design is spectacularly obnoxious and Van Smith's costumes, as always, are knitted from the threads of trash heaven.

Waters does not put a foot wrong and ends proceedings on a surprisingly emotional note.

The first time I saw Female Trouble I was a sheltered suburban white boy and it blew me away. The film begins in white suburbia and we quickly see that Dawn Davenport ( Divine) has just about had it with her lame parents and teachers. She is driven to extremes by the numbing vacuity of her surroundings." I hate this school and all these teachers who don't know one thing.I hate my parents too."From there Dawn follows her own dim lights to where they will lead her. She's always true to herself and is refreshingly driven by her id. I applauded her audacity and courage as I watched her destiny unfold and lead to it's awful end. But I watched from the numb, vacuous safety of my suburban shelter. One thing I noticed was how close a connection there is between Dawn her friends Chicklet and Concetta and Edina Monsoon and her friend Patsy Stone of Absolutely Fabulous. Like Dawn, Edina is a willful, childish, self-centered grown-up with a daughter who is appalled by her mother's immaturity. Both Taffy and Saffy are the voices of maturity while their mothers and their friends are the irresponsible children.

Devine was certainly no stranger to trash films when John Waters assembled the cast of this Baltimore gem, and it shows. Devine is gregarious, derisive at times, a stunning fem fatale who nearly steals the show as both Dawn Davenport, and her alter-ego, Earl, who staggers and lurches his way into our hearts. This film is one of the few times Devine did male drag, and he pulls it off with astonishing effect. Mink Stole is priceless as Taffy, Dawn's long suffering daughter, and of course who could forget Edith Massey as the torturous Aunt Ida and Dawn's nemesis. Almost as brilliant are the performances of Mary-Vivian Pearce and David Lochary, the demented couple who, after interviewing her to become a client in their Le' Lipstick beauty salon, befriend Dawn and encourage her into a fetid and ribald modeling career. Yes, it's shameless, destined for ruin, utterly unbelievable, and I loved every minute of it. Water's dialog is vehement, abominable, and not to be equaled. It's a shame that he hasn't been able to find replacement versions of Devine and Massey. It was the unorthodoxy of his whole approach to film in the 1970s that endeared thousands and made Devine a gay household name. I hope one day he can return to his roots and get down to building more fine trash.

A relentlessly building, frame-by-frame crescendo of deliberate offensiveness. It grows increasingly difficult to separate the broad satire against square society from the equally obvious, near-Sadean delight John Waters and his uniquely talented company of offbeat Baltimoreans take in discovering and displaying new combinations of the perverse and outrageous in nearly every scene. But tracing the roots of crowd pleasers like 'Polyester,' 'Serial Mom' and 'Hairspray' here (and even further back to 'Pink Flamingos') is somehow yet more odd. Edie Massey alone remains above it all: charmingly oblivious, preternaturally sweet despite her physical unloveliness and, well, human as always, even locked in a cage threatening to gouge out Divine's eyes with her hook. Her best line: 'I don't want no G-d d-mn eggs!'