Directed by John Dahl
Starring Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg and Bill Pullman
There is no subgenre that I miss more dearly than the erotic thriller. It undoubtedly peaked with 1992's Basic Instinct, one of the most perfectly scripted and executed films of all time for my money, but there are plenty of other movies that fit this bill that qualify as classics. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Fatal Attraction, Body Heat...it simply doesn't get any better than this stuff, with Joe Eszterhas penning the script and subverting your expectations better than any hack could hope to do today and a soundtrack of enjoyable Cinemax sex jazz.
For the life of me, I can't understand why the erotic thriller vanished from the face of the Earth. Other than maybe the fact that movies with budgets between $5 and $200 million aren't allowed to play in theaters anymore.
The Last Seduction is yet another film that has been on my radar for a long time. Almost a quarter-century, to be exact, when I first read about it in the Ebert companion. I've obviously seen star Linda Fiorentino in plenty of other things, and what I'd seen of her was no doubt enticing enough to make me want to see this movie. I was familiar with director John Dahl, with the 1993 crime film Red Rock West and the 1998 poker epic Rounders being personal favorites. He's a master of gritty neo-noir, and this film was neo-noir at its almost finest. Originally airing on HBO, the movie gained enough traction and word-of-mouth goodwill that it was eventually released in theaters, becoming one of the most critically-acclaimed films in the incredibly stacked film year of 1994. Folks, this was a year where Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Natural Born Killers, The Shawshank Redemption and Hoop Dreams were all released, so competition was fierce.
The film tells the story of Bridget Gregory, played by Fiorentino in a powerful, intense performance. And wow, is she sexy! Everything about her, from her perfectly sculpted face to her slim physique to even her voice and body language, she radiates sex with every beat. She garnered Oscar talk for the role, but amazingly was disqualified due to the film airing on HBO originally. As the movie begins, Bridget's husband Clay (Bill Pullman) is selling stolen cocaine in an attempt to pay off a loan shark while Bridget pays the bills with her gig as a hard-assed telemarketing supervisor. An argument breaks out in their apartment, leading to Clay slapping Bridget and Bridget absconding with $700,000 of Clay's cash.
The majority of the plot takes place in Beston, New York, a small town near Buffalo that serves as Bridget's new base of operations while on the run. There are "fish out of water" elements here as the New York City female stands out from the pack in Beston. She does, however, become the object of affection for local Mike Swale (Peter Berg), local boy who is debating with himself whether or not he wants to leave town and is nursing emotional wounds after a marriage gone bad. In short, this is low-hanging fruit for Bridget, who promptly puts her hooks into Mike for the first in a series of tastefully-done yet titillating sex scenes. Later, for plot convenience sake, she gets a job with an assumed name at the same insurance company that Mike works at.
Rather than tell its story through a series of twists, The Last Seduction allows the audience to be voyeurs and watch everything unfold through the lens of the Bridget-Mike relationship. I heard a theory recently that audiences have problems remembering the plot of a film, but they will remember the characters. Screenwriter Steve Barancik undoubtedly subscribes to this theory and gives us plenty to work with here. It is helped by fantastic chemistry between Fiorentino and Berg; their interactions and dialogue feel completely natural, with Bridget leading the smitten Mike around and direct him like a puppeteer according to her whims. The film has also aged very well in this regard. I've become desensitized completely to movies that require 120 pages of kinetic fight scenes and explosions. It is very refreshing to see a movie that reveals its tension and plot through dialogue instead of boring action scenes.
What we have here in this film is a parable about making moral choices. As Clay begins tracking Bridget down and doing his best to recapture his cash, Bridget seems to have an answer at every turn, utilizing every bit of her brains and beauty in the process and making Mike predictably fall into place with the maneuvers that she wants to make. Characters like this, to me, are much more progressive and feminist than the overpowered superhero chicks we see in movies today. There is mo power more formidable in the world than the power of sexy. This reaches its apex in the movie's climax. The last word of the previous sentence is both figurative and literal, and it gives us the meaning of the film's title.
I will admit that some of what takes place in The Last Seduction is a bit far-fetched from a plot standpoint. I've talked ad nauseum to people in my real life in the past about how the Joker has psychic abilities in The Dark Knight, to the movie's detriment. While there isn't anything quite as stark in this film, some of Bridget's schemes just play out a bit TOO perfectly to not make you scratch your head. She seems to have the ability to predict not only what people will do, but how people will REACT to things and leave her with the exact situation that she had hoped for. Fortunately, the execution of these schemes is always entertaining, with Dahl never wavering in his focus from Bridget. Every time this character seems to be softening, we can see from Fiorentino's facial expressions and line delivery that she has not changed at all. It's fascinating, and it pulls us through the more unrealistic stuff.
The erotic thriller is a film that depends much more on execution than structure. By their very nature, these neo-noir films aren't big on a typical three-act structure. The Last Seduction has execution in spades, not only from director Dahl but also the people in front of the camera. In addition to Fiorentino, both principal males opposite her are pitch-perfect, with Berg getting us on his side as a man who believes he is in love, endlessly frustrated by how Bridget constantly keeps him at an arm's length. Pullman is also aces in a sleazy bad guy role, especially in a scene where he does a celebratory dance as a private detective attempts to trace a call from his estranged wife. Great stuff, no dialogue required. Of course, the movie also does more than hold your attention visually. From a sex standpoint, the film isn't as exploitative as a Joe Eszterhas epic, but it is undeniably hot.
Rating time: *** 1/2 out of ****. This isn't QUITE up to the gold standard Basic Instinct level that the erotic thriller has reached, but it is undoubtedly a classic that mystery and noir fans will love. Check it out.
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