Breathless

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

 

Breathless (1960), directed by Jean-Luc Godard from a story by François Truffaut, epitomizes the film movement known as The French New Wave (previously noted on this blog in Truffaut’s Jules and Jim). These movies stress the art of making a film, so the style is anti-realistic by shooting life like a documentary with hand-held cameras that follow action instead of cuts to set up scenes, and then subverting the format. There are “jump cuts” in this movie which seem chaotic but which coincide with the main character’s rebellious, anarchic personality, and which in turn show the filmmaker’s desire to break with tradition as to story, topics, and style.

 

The center of attention here is Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a.k.a. Laszlo Kovacs. He is a criminal who happily defies the laws of society which for him is like waving the flag of individual freedom. We first see him at the port in Marseille, France, holding a magazine containing sexual content, showing disdain for appropriateness. His hat is as crooked as is his character. He coolly dangles a cigarette from his mouth and rubs his lips with his thumb (which he often does in the film), which reminds us of Humphrey Bogart, who often played characters that swam alone away from the mainstream of compliance. Later in the film Michel looks at movie posters of Bogart and Michel says, “Bogey” addressing the actor as an actor himself and a character feeling a kinship with the man). 

 

He has a woman accomplice who gives him the “coast is clear” sign, and Michel steals a car. She wants to go with him, but he has little concern for her beyond using her for his own purposes, and speeds off. He sings to himself and talks out loud about getting money and taking Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg) to Italy. He breaks the “fourth wall” and speaks directly to the audience (the movie revealing its dismissal of being realistic and instead is self-referential, calling attention to it being a work of art). He seems to wish to break away from what does not make him happy, in this case the countryside of France, and wants to be in the city. He doesn’t care what others think about his preferences as he shows his contempt for the opinions of others. He sees female hitchhikers on the road but drives on, calling them “dogs.” So, he is superficial in the selfishly sexist way he views women. He adds more disdain for careful females when he says, “Women drivers are cowardice personified.” But here it is because he wants to be daring in the way he lives and doesn’t believe in playing it safe. He is upset about any slowing down of the traffic, saying the car is made to run, not stop. The desire to move swiftly is a metaphor for how Michel wants to experience thrills during the short time that life offers. Even when not in a car, he often jumps and runs around.

 

He finds a gun in the glove compartment of the stolen car and pretends to shoot. But, there are actual sounds of the weapon going off an instant later as the camera points to passing trees. The pretend shooting and the sounds are a premonition of what is to occur. The next scene picks up on the possibility of impending trouble as Michel sees policemen on motorcycles on the side of the road. Instead of being cautious he speeds up to escape, and the police follow him. He pulls off the road behind some bushes. Here we have the first of numerous “jump cuts” that collapse action. We get the quick images of Michel holding the found gun, the sound of the gun discharging (which we heard earlier), a shot cop tumbling to the ground, and then Michel running away. Interspersed with action scenes, such as this one, there are scenes where Michel is inactive which illustrates his “moral sloth, his fatigue” as Dudley Andrew says in his essay, “Breathless -Then and Now.” Augmented by the changes in the musical score, we get a “bipolar aesthetic” during the course of the story.

 

There are more quick cuts of Michel arriving in a cab in Paris, trying to use a public telephone, and of him reading a newspaper while walking (looking for news about the policeman he shot). If shown realistically, time would be consumed doing routine action, but the effect is to speed up events, again stressing the stylized approach to filmmaking. In his essay, Andrew says the film “brings anarchy into the heart of Paris.” That suggests that Paris is a place of traditional style and attitudes and Godard’s approach is to upend that staid way of looking at things. 

 

Michel arrives at Patricia’s apartment, but she is out. He complains that he can’t find cash there because, he says, women never have money, which shows how he uses females for his own benefit. After not finding Patricia he goes to the place of another female acquaintance. Any port in a storm, I guess. He wants her to loan him money, she calls him “rotten,” and he agrees with her. He knows he is not a “good guy” and he doesn’t care, as he does not subscribe to standard morality. He illustrates this fact by saying she can keep the small amount of money she has, but then steals it anyway, making him a liar and a thief. Michel looks at himself in mirrors, suggesting his preoccupation with himself. In this scene Michel holds a toy monkey. Godard was influenced by director Nicholas Ray, and a toy monkey is a key symbol in Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, the title of that film fitting in well with Michel’s character. The two rebels in these films represent the desire for freedom but with that urge for liberation they become tethered to the Angel of Death. 

 

Michel catches up with Patricia and the first thing he says is, “Come with me to Rome.” There is no time for foreplay for him because he just wants to keep moving. She is selling copies of the New York Herald Tribune in the street, an appropriate place for the man on the run. He says he doesn’t want to be in Paris because he has “enemies” there, another reason for this outsider to not stay in one place too long. The newspaper doesn’t have a horoscope, and he wants to know the future, which also stresses forward movement. They were only together five days earlier, yet he says the two women with whom he slept since they separated did not “jive” with him the way she did. He obviously gets around in and out of bed. But, it is she that left him, so he doesn’t always have the upper hand when it comes to women. 

 Michel passes by a sign that reads “live dangerously until the end,” which could be his slogan. Those words are appropriately followed by a car hitting a man. The jump cuts in the film are like photographed images strung together without providing the inessential time between them. So, Michel sees the car and then there is the man on the ground. The effect is visceral, as if Godard is punching his audience with quick visuals. Michel makes the sign of the cross as he stands over the dead pedestrian, as if bestowing an outlaw's benediction on a man who did not wither away in old age. 

 

Michel reads in a newspaper that the man who killed the policeman was identified and there is a picture of himself on the page. This development raises the stakes in the plot as Michel is at increased risk of getting caught for his crime, although he acts detached despite the peril he is in. He goes to a travel agency to see a man named Tolmatchoff (Richard Balducci) who has an envelope from someone who owes Michel money, but there is no cash in it. Tolmatchoff says he is “rusting away” in his job. Interestingly, Michel says, “Better rusted than busted,” which shows that Michel would choose a stagnant life of one’s own choosing outside rather than the even more confining existence inside a prison. As Michel leaves, he just misses encountering two men who ask for him. Police Inspector Vital (Daniel Boulanger) knows Tolmatchoff, who he has used to inform on another crook. He knows that Michel has his mail forwarded to the travel agency. He also says Michel used to be an airline steward, which fits his mobile personality. Tolmatchoff says he hasn’t seen Michel, but the receptionist tells the cops that a man was just there talking to Tolmatchoff. The policemen go in pursuit as Vital informs the clueless Tolmatchoff that he can be an “accessory to murder.” Michel is spreading his collateral damage to his unsuspecting acquaintances. 

 To get some extra money, Michel has no qualms about knocking a guy out in a men’s restroom and robbing him so he can take Patricia to dinner. He tells her a story about someone who stole money and took a woman to the Riviera. He told her this man was a thief, but the woman stuck by him and even helped with his robberies. It’s as if Michel is testing the waters to see if Patricia will want to be with him if he admits to his criminal activities. But, Patricia instead says she is late for a meeting with an American journalist, so she is also dating someone else. He is upset and even though he gives her a ride, he tries to convince her to stay with him, even if they don’t have sex. She ignores his praising her looks and tells him to just drop her off. He then is like a rebuffed teenager, telling her he never wants to see her again, and to “Get Lost!” 

 

There is then the first scene without Michel. Patricia meets with the journalist for lunch, and asks, “Am I unhappy because I am free, or free because I’m unhappy?” In any case, she is stating that she is sad. She may be implying that liberation can come from not caring about being happy since the burden to lead a happy life is lifted. And yet, one longs for being bound to something that can bring joy. Godard says in an essay entitled, “I’m Not Out of Breath,” that the film “Accentuates this confusion.” They leave, and Michel stalks them and sees the two kissing in the man’s car.  He is most likely upset because he feels he has been romantically out-conquested.

 

Earlier, Michel saw the couple’s reflection as they left the restaurant. The next day, Patricia looks at herself in a mirror that is in a store window. She finds that Michel has taken the key to where she is staying and she finds him in her bed with a stuffed teddy bear. There is an echo here of the toy monkey, and the possibility that people are caught between childhood and adulthood. He makes odd faces at her and she looks at a mirror and also makes different facial expressions. Again, there is that preoccupation with oneself. But there is also the possibility that the film is commenting on acting and the way movies can reflect the inner aspects of people. 

 

She tells him that the journalist is getting pieces for her to write, so she had to go with him, but insists that she didn’t sleep with the man. He says he loves her, but still puts the emphasis on the sexual part of their relationship. She says she wishes they could be like Romeo and Juliet, and Michel is exasperated by the female desire to turn love affairs into idealistic tales, where one lover can’t live without the other. But, the insertion here of the names of the characters in the tragedy by Shakespeare may be a bit of foreshadowing. And so might Michel’s fake threat of strangling Patricia unless she gives him a smile (echoes of Othello?). The appropriate follow-up to that is when he asks her if she thinks about death, and he admits he thinks about it all the time. In his essay, Godard says that people “every second stage their own executions in one way or another.” So, in that sense his movie is about “death.” Since one’s mortality is inevitable, it is just a matter of how an individual plays out the steps to that end that matter. 

 

Patricia asks him to say something nice and he can’t do that at first, since being sweet is not in his makeup. The best he can do is tell her he wants to sleep with her because she is beautiful. She says that is not true, and then he says it’s because she is ugly, and says both are the same. Again, we have that confusion, that “bipolar” feeling of irreconcilable opposites. She calls him a liar, and he is that, since he lies about his fake passport with his alias, Laszlo Kovacs, on it by saying the document belongs to his brother. He then says it’s better to tell the truth when playing poker because others think you are bluffing, and then you win. It is a cynical comment on how people assume others are dishonest and the forthright person can use that frankness for selfish reasons. Then they switch from skeptical adults to childlike innocents again, playing a staring game. She looks at him through a rolled-up poster, and the effect is to simulate seeing Belmondo through a camera lens, as the movie continues to reference filmmaking. 

 

The two kiss, and then Patricia says she might be pregnant and Michel would be the father. His response is a cold, selfish criticism that she should have been more careful, as he takes no responsibility for his actions. He is only interested in getting some money from Antonio, who owes him. She says she told him about her possible pregnancy to see how he would react. He obviously didn’t pass the test. He phones Tolmatchoff who tells him the police questioned him about Michel. As Michel and Patricia talk, a police siren is heard in the background, an omen that the authorities are closing in on him. He previously picked up her skirt and she smacked him. He now grabs her behind, and receives another smack. He doesn’t change despite punishment for his transgressions. 

 

This story is a modern romance, as they have sex first and then get to know each other afterwards. He finds out she is twenty years old, and she learns he sold cars in New York (which shows his attachment to things that defy being stationary). He asks about how many men she has slept with and she says not that many, holding up seven fingers. He flashes multiple digits and also says it’s not a large sum. The movie suggests that men and women have different perspectives on the extent of their sexual experiences. Michel spouts more sexist opinions about women, rating them on a scale of one to ten, and how available they make themselves for sex. But he does seem to give more weight to a woman being “charming” compared to her appearance. He loves to see Patricia in profile, as he expresses an almost artistic view of how he sees her. She says she wants him to love her, but is afraid of that love because she is independent. Perhaps this American aspect of her, the desire for individual freedom, is one of the reasons he is attracted to her. She says she wants to know what is behind his face, but would she want to know the criminal part of his personality? He pulls the sheets on the bed over his head, possibly a metaphor about how he is hiding his lawbreaking actions.

 

There is again that “confusion” in life that Godard spoke of when Michel says Patricia is “sweet, gentle,” but when she says he doesn’t know her, he states opposite characteristics, calling her, “mean, stupid, heartless, pathetic, cowardly, despicable.” He is being playful, but it also shows that when she doesn’t respond to his seductive kindness he then swings to the other side of the attribute pendulum. He is like a child having a tantrum when he doesn’t get the candy he wants. She hopes to write a novel, using everything she experiences as grist for her imaginative mill, so she doesn’t care about his criticisms. They are in many ways opposites, as she asks if he knows William Faulkner, and he wants to know if he is someone she slept with. (Men seem to want to have sex with many women but don’t want those women to sleep with other men, wishing to claim intimate ownership over their females). She is associated with traditional artistic forms, but the soundtrack favors jazz when Michel is the focus, and he prefers pop culture, like films. Michel says that, “I always get interested in girls who aren’t right for me,” which is a reference to The Maltese Falcon, and weds this film to the film noir tradition, as Michel is the outsider anti-hero). So, opposites attract sometimes, and maybe he wants her to desire him despite his lack of cultural refinement, and she is attracted to his raw sexuality and untethered lifestyle. 

 

She reads from Faulkner who says that between grief and nothing, he would choose grief. Not great options there. She asks which would Michel choose, and after evading the question, says he would pick nothing, because “grief’s a compromise. I want all or nothing.” His response is consistent with his drive to let no rules or boundaries confine his desire for self-gratification. If it leads to “nothing,” death, then so be it. Existential philosophy plays a role in the movie, as the main characters seem to be dealing with Jean-Paul Sartre’s book Being and Nothingness. Existentialism states there are no preexisting absolutes, and thus there is the possibility that “hell is other people,” as noted in Sartre’s play No Exit. Others try to define you, box you in as to how to be. So, the reality is that “existence precedes essence,” which means one acts in the world and then makes sense out of the actions afterwards. The film has those quick sequences and then there are these long scenes that reflect on life.  

 

This slowed down scene ends with a jump cut that speeds things up and there is an indication that the couple had sex. After the almost claustrophobic bedroom scene we get a contrasting aerial view of Paris. Michel lies again about going to get his car, but he actually steals one. More infractions on his part. As they drive, she continues with her introspective wonderings, saying she is “scared of aging.” His take is “being afraid is the worst sin.” For him, fear of anything diminishes how many thrills one can squeeze out of living. 

 While stopped as Patricia goes to her office, Michel sees a man (Godard himself) looking at him while holding a newspaper that has Michel’s picture on it and a story calling him a cop killer. He and Patricia drive away and the man approaches two policemen and points to the departing car as the music gets louder, suggesting trouble is increasing for Michel. Michel then drops Patricia off at a press conference at the airport. The writer, Parvulesco (the filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville) fields questions there. Godard presents us with himself as a character to stress his art over realism, and another real filmmaker, Melville, portraying a different kind of artist who comments, as art does, on life.  Parvulesco says that American women dominate the men but that is not yet the case with French women. Perhaps this comment relates to the American Patricia not being submissive and Michel finding her an intriguing challenge. When Patricia finally gets to ask Parvulesco what is his greatest ambition, he says he would like to be immortal and then die. More of that “confusion,” that Godard talks about. Here the contradictory statement implies the desire for complete freedom, even from death, followed by the wish for the ability to then choose nothingness to escape that “grief” which is part of existence that Michel despises. 

 

Michel drives to a junkyard (a possible metaphor for the deterioration of the social structure). He is trying to get money for the Ford Thunderbird he stole from Claudius Mansard (played by Claude Mansard, the almost identical name showing the Godard is not trying to present his film as a version of reality). He buys the car from Michel, but says he can’t pay him until later, and then shows him his picture in the newspaper. He has leverage because of Michel’s infamy, and may even believe Michel will get caught before he has to pay him. Michel’s response about his being in the newspaper is, “So what?” It goes back to him not wanting to live his life in fear. Michel finds out that he is to meet Antonio, the man who owes him money, later in the day. Michel tries to continue his thievery by going through Claudius’s desk, but the man is careful and says he keeps his money on him. Michel has the audacity, despite his unscrupulous behavior, to ask for a loan, which, of course, is refused. Claudius removed the distributor cap from the car so Michel could not drive it away. But the unrestrained Michel hits Claudius, and steals money for his “cab” fare. 

 

 In the cab, Michel wants to get to his meeting with Antonio, and as usual, he doesn’t care about anybody else as he tells the cab driver, “Never mind the pedestrians. Just move it!” He bullies the cab driver with backseat driving, not wanting anything to interfere with his needs. He says, “Don’t use the brakes. Cars are made to go, not stop!” We again see his disdain for anything holding him back from what he wants. Monetary responsibility is an annoyance that hinders him, and he stiffs the cabbie as he pretends he will be right back to pay him. He says to Patricia he hates cab drivers because they are afraid to scratch up the car. He is showing how he does not tolerate fear even if recklessness results in damage.  He is, however, late and Antonio left. Patricia is with him, and he continues to lie to her, fraudulently covering up his darker self, saying there was an accident, and the Thunderbird was damaged. He again shows his antisocial behavior by momentarily jumping out of the car and lifting the skirt of a female pedestrian, as he did earlier with Patricia. In answer to his question as to why she works at the newspaper, she says wittily to make enough money not to have to rely on men. She shows how she is not willing to submit to his will, which makes him want her more.

 

They separate as Patricia goes to the newspaper office where Inspector Vital found her by way of the snitch you pointed her out on the street with Michel. He shows her a newspaper with a large picture of Michel on it identifying him as the man who killed a policeman. It is strange that this journalist is clueless as to what has been in the news. Perhaps it suggests that Patricia wants to believe that Romeo and Juliette love affair can exist despite the facts. Her first response is denial, but she then is honest about having only known Michel for a short time and she doesn’t know where he is staying. She admits that he is looking for someone with an Italian name who owes him money. Vital wants her to contact him if she hears from Michel again. The hiding Michel sees the cops waiting for Patricia to come out of the building and watches as one follows her. He then tails the cop, hiding behind the newspaper that ironically has his picture on it. There is a large gathering of people as President Charles De Gaulle and President Dwight Eisenhower attend an event at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The formality of the orderly established leadership clashes with the threat to lawful order that Michel’s actions pose. 

 

Patricia, a character in a movie, goes into a movie theater to evade the policeman following her. This scene of a film within a film shows Godard reminding us that we are watching his cinematic work. She meets Michel outside, and says she wants to see a western movie. She wishes to escape into an idealized story of good guys versus bad ones, which is not what Michel’s life offers outside of the theater. Inside the movie theater they kiss and there she can pretend that she lives in a romanticized world. As they drive, Patricia finds out that Michel was married once, which he dismisses as the woman being crazy. She is trying to understand his motivations and whether she should stick with this outlaw. So far she goes along as they switch stolen cars. He seems to have a fatalistic philosophy about people, saying informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, and lovers make love. It’s as if he’s saying that people follow their innate nature and can’t change who they are. He might be rationalizing by thinking he had no choice but to be a criminal. 

 

There are flashing news rolls on buildings saying how the police are closing in on Michel, which increases the suspense around Michel’s story. Michel finally locates Antonio Berrutti (Henri-Jacques Huet) at an outside eatery, and Patricia gets more exposure to the illegal life as Antonio photographs a woman he sent to kiss a man so he can blackmail him. They are to hide out at a model’s place, and there she is being photographed, another reference to recording images on film. The model leaves with the photographer, and Michel, still feeling insecure and wanting to claim his territory, asks if Patricia has called it off with her journalist friend. She says she has, but said hello to him at the dining out spot just to make Michel jealous. She does know how to push his buttons. Patricia says before they go to sleep that it is “sad to fall asleep. It separates people. Even when you’re sleeping together, you’re all alone.” She is preoccupied with her unhappiness, and here stresses how emotionally estranged people can be even in intimate situations.

 

The next day Patricia goes out and calls Inspector Vital and tells him where Michel is. She goes back to the model’s house and tells Michel what she did. Her explanation is that she wanted to test herself to see if she was in love with him, and since she did something that will hurt him then she must not truly love him. Apparently, she could not just trust her own feelings and needed to rely on her behavior to see how much she cared about him. She is a femme fatale in the film nori sense since she betrays her love interest, which, despite his rule-breaking ways, Michel would not do, since he has a code that does not allow for informing on other outlaws. They start to have overlapping dialogue with no communication between the two which shows that they are distancing themselves from each other. He shows how they have not solidified their connection when he says, “When we talked, I talked about me, you tackled about you, when we should have talked about each other.” She urges him to leave, most likely so he will not have a hold on her. Michel says he is tired and may now prefer going to prison. It’s as if she has taken away his reason for wanting to run away.

 

The action abruptly shifts to Michel going outside to meet Antonio who urges him to get in his car. But Michel addresses the camera as if telling the audience that he is “fed up,” and “tired.” It’s sort of his way of staying because he doesn’t want to leave Patricia. He will not take Antonio’s gun, probably because he knows that shooting a cop before led him to his current situation. The police arrive and Antonio throws his gun to Michel before driving off. Michel picks up the pistol and one of the cops shoots him in the back as Michel tries to get away, which is what he always tries to do. Patricia runs after him, but he collapses in the street. He makes some contradictory faces at her, one a smile, maybe a mouthing that says he loves her, and then he draws his hand over his face as if Belmondo is drawing a curtain over the performance. He tells her she makes him want to “puke.” We again have that “confusion” of contrasting expressions that make up life. 

 

Michel then dies, and that sign he walked under earlier could be the words that could go on his tombstone: “Live dangerously until the end.” Patricia seems to take on his spirit as she brushes her thumb over her lips, Bogey-style. So, the film ends with a cinematic reference to filmmakers, a sort of gesture of love, a kiss, to those who make movies.

The next film is Sleuth.

The Last Seduction

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

 The Last Seduction (1994), along with Body Heat and Basic Instinct, break ground in the film noir genre by not punishing the femme fatale characters for using male sexual obsession for their own benefit. These are scary women, but there is an empowerment factor introduced in these films that leads to female characters in movies like The Piano and The Contender, and subsequent films and TV shows, that attack the sexual double standard.

 

The film begins with a jazz score, which can point to the rule-breaking, subversive nature of the main character. There is an overhead shot of a statue of a large bird mounted atop a New York City building as the camera looks down on the traffic below. Is the fowl a predatory animal ready to swoop down on its prey, like the main character? On the office desk of Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino, who would have received an Oscar nomination if the film hadn’t originally appeared on cable TV) is a display with coins in it stating they represent the “One Ounce Liberty Dollar.” This shot may suggest that Bridget values her independence which money can secure for her. She is a tough supervisor whipping her male subordinates with an emasculating attitude to sell the coin sets. The scene stresses a reversal of gender dominance.

 

Meanwhile, Bridget’s husband, Clay Gregory (Bill Pullman), a sleazy doctor, has a briefcase full of prescription drugs that he is selling to a dealer. Clay (something Bridget can mold for her own purposes?) thinks he is going to be shot when the pusher’s henchman pulls a gun. But Clay is paid his money, although he must store it on his person as he picks up the literal and figurative “dirty” money from the ground. 

 Bridget is beautiful and sexy in her short skirts. She mostly wears dark stockings perhaps to don the standard color of the villain. At home, Bridget impatiently waits for her husband’s return from the meeting. She apathetically watches a news story about the deaths of individuals, which emphasizes the tone of danger in the story as well as Bridget’s indifference to what happens to others. Clay arrives looking pregnant (another reverse gender image) with his shirt stuffed with cash. Bridget calls him an “idiot” for walking around like that. Clay lashes out and slaps her hard across the face. Bad move. That violence against a woman immediately puts us on Bridget’s side in this marriage. And, it is the act that sets Bridget off on her darker war against males. Clay immediately apologizes and blames it on the intensity of the meeting. He flashes the $700,000 he has acquired and she appears to be won over by the money, which he admits she masterminded, showing her as the real brains of the operation. She licks a packet of the cash, an image combining sexuality with greed. 

 He wants to celebrate by going out on the town, but she encourages him to take a shower first, since he smells, as he says, of “fear.” Unfortunately for him he is up against a fearless female. She empties out a condom box (another item linking her to sexual power), places it on the bed, and writes a note. She has a talent which allows her to write backwards, which implies that she can reverse the usual perception of women as seen by society. It also may suggest that what she shows on the surface is the opposite of what she is planning beneath the deceptive appearance she displays. Her note, which Clay knows must be viewed in a mirror to decode, says they can’t celebrate without prophylactics, so she went out to buy some. It is meant as a delaying tactic, but Clay catches on quickly and realizes she has run off with the money. He is undressed and sees her dashing off in the street. He yells in a threatening voice that she “better run.”

 

Bridget had no intention of sharing the cash with Clay. She just used him as a pawn to get what she wanted, while he is the one committing the crime and putting himself in danger. She grabs a cab to an underpass where she has a car waiting for her escape. Before she drives away, she pulls off her wedding ring, showing how the marriage means nothing to her, and indicates her freedom from being attached to a man. 

 She stops for gas at a small town called Beston (not really the ‘best” place to be) in New York State on her way to Chicago, which is still twelve hours away. Bridget seems impatient and annoyed by the tedious trip. She eyes a bar where Mike Swale (Peter Berg) looks like he is in a funk as he drinks with a couple of pals, Chris (Brien Varady) and Shep (Dean Norris). We learn that he didn’t like living in this dead-end town, went to Buffalo, says it “didn’t work out,” and is back. He will not elaborate, and we find out why later. But his attitude makes him a prime target for the exciting Bridget. An old flame, Stacy (Donna W. Scott) greets Mike as she heads to the counter. One of the men acts like an adolescent, making a lewd gesture. Mike warns that the women living there are all “anchors,” suggesting that they will tie men down to this loser place. His words indicate that he still wants to escape. One of his pals asks if Mike has lost his “dick” for not wanting to pursue the local women, and it turns out to be a relevant statement when we learn what really happened in Buffalo. Mike is wearing a wedding ring and he takes it off (which echoes Bridget’s earlier action). The act indicates he was married in Buffalo, and also wants freedom. He wants to leave Beston, but tells his friend he needs to grow a new set of “balls” to do so. Does this suggest he felt psychologically castrated by what happened to him in Buffalo? 

Bridget walks in and demands a Manhattan (a place she just left but her sense of city superiority to this hick town is symbolized by her order). The bartender is hostile to this entitled female and ignores her in an exaggerated way. She then voices disdain for the demure sexual role placed upon women by saying who does she have to “suck” to get a drink. But her words are also sexually alluring so she works both sides of the coin (which is what was objectively displayed on her desk earlier). Mike shows shock but smiles at Bridget’s language, which excites him, since she is like a shot of adrenalin to this sleepy town. His friend Shep calls her “city trash,” and asks what Clay sees in Bridget. His response is “maybe a new set of balls.” He wants to reassert his masculinity, and he sees Bridget as an opportunity to do that.

 To recapture his manhood Mike gets the bartender to give Bridget her drink, and he pays for it. Her initial response is to tell him to get lost. He then boasts to her that he’s “hung like a horse.” She comically calls him “Mr. Ed,” and she quickly assesses that this handsome guy is someone she can use for her own gratification. She becomes the sexual aggressor, unzipping his pants and feeling around inside, humorously saying she wants to examine the goods before buying. They go to his place after she interrogates him to make sure it meets her basic standards of livability. Bridget wastes no time on sentimentality or being romantic. She is tougher than most men pretend to be.

 

The next morning, after they had sex, Mike wakes up and discovers that Bridget is already dressed and is raiding his refrigerator. She acquired a place to stay and food, which makes her sound like a prostitute. But she wanted Mike for sex, so she is not being exploited. She dismisses him as she wants to make a private call. She rolls her eyes at how easily he responds to her commands, like a pet dog. She eats some pie, which has the note “Love, Grandma” on its covering, and then uses the plate to put out her cigarette, which shows her scorn for anything resembling emotional warmth. She contacts a no-nonsense lawyer, Frank Griffith (J. T. Walsh). (It is funny that she says she is in “Mayberry” and Andy “Griffith” played the role of the wholesome sheriff of Mayberry on TV). During the conversation, we find out that they previously were sexual partners, and, fitting her personality, Bridget puts down his sexual abilities. She asks about her monetary liability if she buys anything with the money she took, and he says Clay would be entitled to half of anything bought before a divorce. He advises to hold onto the cash and stay put since Chicago is where she has a friend and Clay will look for her there. Frank’s advice causes Bridget to address her agenda in Beston. She coldly leaves the mostly undressed Mike in the other room without a word. This scene mirrors how she left Clay without his clothes on, a sort of play on getting caught in a vulnerable position, with one’s pants down.

She drives into town and her hard, ill-mannered ways contrast sharply with the townspeople who all say “good morning” to her. She does not return their polite greetings and even eyes them suspiciously, as if sincerity does not exist in her mind. She finds a job managing the sales solicitation department of an outfit called Interstate Insurance Company, since she has experience in the field. She secures confidentiality by using the male perception of a woman being a victim by saying her husband beat her and doesn’t want her real name on any official records. Her boss, Bob Trotter (Herb Mitchell) buys her story and notices her trick of being able to sign her name backwards. He doesn't realize that the fake name she uses, Wendy Kroy, is New York spelled backwards (if you drop off the “dy” of the first name). Again, we have her inverting the truth. 

 Coincidentally, Mike also works at the same company and runs into her as she leaves Bob’s office. She finds this fact inconvenient and tells him that he should consider the sex they had as just a fantasy because she doesn’t want him to mess up her “image.” She continually pretends to be something she is not for her own purposes. Here, she most likely doesn’t want it known that she is sexually adventurous as a small town will not accept a woman with that trait which is usually associated with men. 

In her private office she again calls Frank and tells him she has a six-month work contract. He wants plausible deniability, and doesn’t want to know where she is so that Clay can’t get him to legally reveal anything. After he served Clay with divorce papers, per Bridget’s directions, Clay asked about Bridget’s whereabouts because he needs money to pay a loan shark. Frank advises her to send some cash to Clay so he will not be so desperate to hunt her down. She is reluctant, and Frank jokingly asks, “anyone check you for a heartbeat recently?” since she acts so uncaring. She agrees to call her husband, which she does. Clay reaches for the phone and his hand has been splinted, the results of an encounter with the loan shark. She calls him through the operator so he will not know where the call is coming from. When he answers, he fishes for the location from the operator, but the smart Bridget immediately disconnects the call as this literal battle between the sexes continues.

Bridget returns to the same bar and maintains her sarcasm toward the bartender. She has the same attitude toward Mike. She looks irritated by his joining her by asking aren’t there any other bars in town for him to frequent. He shows he can be condescendingly witty like her by saying he couldn’t get any info on her from the other secretaries. When she gets pissed off about the secretary reference he interrupts her by showing he knows exactly her job position. She likes his edgy comment and they have sex outside the back door of the establishment. He, being more traditionally feminine, wanting more of a commitment, asks where he fits in with her plans. She plays the more masculine role again by calling him her “designated fuck,” and walks off, sexually satisfied. 

 

They continue having sex in his car and apartment, keeping her place off-limits, wanting separate autonomy. But he says that he doesn’t like being emotionally distanced. She is using him “like a sex object,” which she admits is accurate. Their encounters stress the reversal of the usual female/male positions (recalling again her writing backwards). When he pushes to find out what she is “afraid of” since she will not open up to him, she plays the tender female who has been hurt in the past and fears falling in love with him, making her vulnerable. Then she undercuts her words by flatly saying, “Will that do?” She says she likes her privacy which maintains her emotional sovereignty.

 

Mike isn’t enough of a diversion for her and she is bored in this small town, biding her time pending the divorce, and wants to return to New York. She calls Clay again, but she takes her lawyer’s advice and protects herself from Clay tracing her calls by quickly asking him to give her the phone number of the public phone outside. She is right to be suspicious because Clay has a private investigator, Harlan (Bill Nunn) tapping his phone. Harlan has an early version of a mobile phone and Clay gives her that number so Harlan can trace it. Clay jumps around to simulate being out of breath running to the outside line and opens the window to make it sound like he is in a public phone booth. When she calls he wanders away and she insightfully wonders why it’s quiet. She specifically says she is entitled to the cash because he hit her, but we know she was plotting to steal from him already. But her mentioning this act stresses her desire for revenge against the abusive ways of men, a tendency that she exploits for her own purposes. She says she needs to get back to New York and is willing to pay off the loan shark and Clay’s private detective, which he admits to hiring to suggest honesty. But Clay and Harlan didn’t deactivate the home phone line in the apartment and when it rings Bridget quickly realizes the scam and hangs up. After she phones Frank he assures her that the most Clay got was an area code, which is what Harlan acquired, showing she is in “cow country.” 

 

Bridget’s desire for privacy on her terms is stressed as Mike must apologize for accidentally walking in on her in the bathroom. Also, she tells him that a woman loses half her acceptability at a job if others know who she is sleeping with, another example of the need for her to put on an act of sexual respectability. When he touches her as they enter the workplace, in order to maintain autonomy, she smacks him and pretends to accuse him of sexual harassment in the atrium of the building, turning the female employees against Mike. Again, we have the appearance of the opposite of what is true displayed because Bridget must hide her real self to get what she wants given society’s preconceptions concerning women.

Meanwhile, Clay is giving prescriptions for drugs to sleazy visitors for cash. Harlan says he has nothing to go on to find Bridget. Clay is not a dummy, and when he happens to look at a New York poster hanging on his wall in a mirror, he sees the city’s name in reverse, which clues him into what name Bridget has used as an alias. He knows she is obsessed with leaving the farm orchards behind and returning to the Big Apple. He gives Harlan the backwards name of Wendy Kroy to investigate.

 

After five days Bridget approaches Mike at the bar, and he is still angry at her. She has moved to a townhouse and is actually willing to let him visit her there, a big move for her. He says he wants them to share stuff, and she actually starts to open up by suggesting what might happen when a person steals a large sum of money. He cuts her off, assuming she is just giving him an exaggerated story. She is the girl who cried wolf, told too many lies and now nobody believes the truth. He says being a claims adjuster, some clients share more “intimacies” about themselves in a few minutes than he has learned about her. He relates about one woman who wished she knew the sum of her husband’s insurance policy earlier because she would have killed him herself. Mike says you can learn a great deal about a credit report, and saw that the woman’s husband was a cheater because there were three credit cards he authorized for use by three different women. And, he had an apartment in his name only. The gathering of disreputable information piques Bridget’s larcenous and vengeful interests. 

 

Bridget gets Mike to go to the company after hours to make a list of clients whose credit reports show credit card authorizations for women other than wives or daughters and who hold separate living places in their own names. She wants men who carry at least a quarter-of-a-million-dollar life insurance policies as incentives for the wives. She talks about selling murder to the female spouses of these cheating men, but just as a practical joke. She gets one woman on the phone and asks about the credit card of one of the women he was involved with by pretending that is who she is talking to, while knowing it is actually the wife. The spouse starts to cry, saying her husband has cheated before. Bridget says that someone she knew had her philandering husband killed and that there are people who handle this activity. The woman actually seems interested and that is when Bridget says she is just kidding. Mike says Bridget is sick if she thinks what she did is fun, but she says if he wants to get closer, he must share in her messing with people's minds. She offers sex at her place as a reward, so, she is also messing with Mike’s head. He makes the call. Her phone scheme fits in with the theme of the film of avenging the deeds of disreputable males. In a way, the wrong actions of men have created the monster that is Bridget. 

 

At Bridget’s place, she asks Mike about his ex-wife, a guess on her part that he was married and wanting to make up for lost time. In a switch, he doesn’t want to talk now, and Bridget reminds him about wanting to open up. He says his ex, Trish, was someone he married in Buffalo and it was a mistake. He said all he wanted, until recently, was to get out of this small, dull town. She presses him about what changed. He says it was her, coming from someplace “big” and choosing him, which means he is “bigger” than Beston. She has made him feel exceptional by having him win the sophisticated, sexy woman contest. He doesn’t realize he is just a tool to be used for Bridget’s purposes. He does understand that she continually makes him know that she is “bigger” than he is. So, she alternately builds him up and lets him down. But, like many people in denial about a lopsided relationship, Mike believes that she will see the light and will come to realize that he is her equal.

 

The receptionist at the office tells her a “black man” (Harlan) was looking for her. She rightly assumes that since she is in hiding, anybody seeking her is connected to her husband. She admits to Mike at his place that someone is after her, but doesn’t disclose the details, wanting to use Mike as a protective buffer. She tells him she wants to carry out a murder of a cheating, wife-beating husband, a man insured by another company to add distance to the crime. She says the man deserves it, justifying the act based on the man getting what he deserves. She probably actually believes that part. She manipulates him emotionally, saying if he loves her, she will do it with her, and wants him to go with her to New York after getting payment. Mike’s first reaction is that she is sick and needs psychiatric help, but he has been mesmerized by her which is why he doesn’t permanently leave her or alert the authorities.

 

After Mike walks out to get some space, Bridget shows a moment of vulnerability, saying to herself that she is “scared.” Her instincts are correct again. When she gets into her car, Harlan gets in, too. But she has brought some pepper spray to a gunfight, and Harlan’s pistol trumps her weapon. She tries to make a deal with him to split the money, but he isn’t buying her ploy. She says the money is in the bank (but we have seen she hid it in her house), and gives him a phone number to get the balance. He gets back into the car after the phony phone call at a booth, but he was smart enough to take her car keys to foil her plan to drive away. He realizes the cash is at her place and they start to drive there. She starts to ask him if it’s true about black men having large penises, and says she’ll show him her ass if he shows his genitalia. He dismisses her at first, but she flirtatiously persists. There is a shot of her looking at the dashboard which shows the car is equipped with only a driver's side airbag. We know Bridget is up to lethal no good. She wears him down and Harlan releases his seat belt to unzip his pants. She revs up the engine and speeds right into a pole. The airbag deploys, saving Bridget, but Harlan is propelled right through the windshield. She has again flipped the switch of gender power by using the male fixation on sex to her own benefit.

 

Bridget continues playing the prescribed female role of victim to control men at the hospital where she is treated after the impact with the airbag. (It is a Catholic hospital because there is a crucifix with Christ on the wall in her room. The decor is ironic, associating her with someone who suffered). The policeman questioning her agrees to keep her name confidential to protect her from her abusive husband. He asks why the victim’s penis was exposed, and she says that Harlan threatened to “impale” her with his large member. Here she is also working male racial stereotypes to her advantage with the police to reverse the reality of what really occurred.

 

Mike shows up at the hospital with flowers, feeling very sorry he left her unprotected. After all this time he still is under her sexual spell and doesn’t realize that others need to be protected from her. He rightly admits that he doesn’t “understand” her. She utilizes the present situation to say that killing a worthless woman abuser is justified, and morality is subjective because the President authorizes killing often. She says she can’t stay in Beston much longer, possibly referring to his earlier statement about it being too “small” for him and her. She gets up to depart and when he asks if she has been discharged, she fires back that he is always following rules, tying him to the confines of the small town from which he wants to escape.

 

She calls Clay knowing that since he is aware of where she is she must buy some time to prevent further intimidation. She is right again because Clay has Harlan’s replacement, a local cop, Bert (Mike Lisenco), who he has promised some of the recovered money, sitting outside her house. He also threatens to expose her culpability in the drug deal if she tries to inform the police of his involvement. He says he is “interviewing sociopaths” who will delight in doing horrible things to her if she does not cooperate. She says she wants a week to wrap things up where she is before returning the money to him. She agrees to send him $15,000 so he can pay his loan shark some cash. He asks why she double-crossed him, and she says because he struck her. He rightly says that is just an excuse, but she says now she gets to hit him back, and adds after hanging up “hard.” We know she wants the money and her revenge.

 

She lies to Mike, telling him she is going to New York for the weekend to keep him away. Playing the typical unthreatening female role of housekeeper to disarm her opponent, she heats up store-bought cookies to make it look as if she baked them, and walks to the stakeout man’s car wearing an apron. However, she was also banging nails into a strip of wood. Quite a contrast in cooking stuff up. She has the wood attached to the straps at the back of the apron, like a scorpion concealing the stinger, pretends to drop a cookie, and places the puncture-enhanced object under the car’s rear tire. She later calls a cab and instructs the driver to take her to Buffalo. When Bert tries to tail her, the nails do their job.

 

In Buffalo, Bridget, a sort of evil genius when it comes to human psychology, suspects that there is something she can use concerning Mike’s marriage. She bribes an official to find out where Trish, Mike’s ex, lives. She visits Trish (the one-named Serena), but we do not see the meeting to heighten the reveal later in the story. But, Bridget’s smile shows that the information she has received is satisfying. Meanwhile, Mike, at the local Beston bar, finds out from his friend Chris that Bridget asked him about the one secret Mike had that he wouldn’t want her to know. Chris assumed it was about Buffalo, but he says he didn’t say anything. Chris, showing the primitive male desire to boast to other men about sexual conquests, tells Mike that Bridget offered to give him oral sex for the information. Mike, displaying primal jealousy, hits Chris, and gets him to admit he was the one who made a pass at Bridget. 

 

Mike leaves extremely upset about learning of Bridget’s questions about his past. He gets drunk and calls her, thinking she is in New York, just to leave a message. (Even Bridget’s phone machine message is scary, with her voice darkly comic, saying, “Don’t be afraid. It’s only a machine”). He says he loves her, and Bridget, listening, rolls her eyes again at what she most likely considers pitiable sentimentality. But he now sounds as if he would do anything if only she loved him, too, which seems to interest her. She starts to draw on a pad of paper next to her phone. She somehow knows exactly how Mike will act. He drives over there intoxicated, and bangs into trash cans, mirroring his reckless state. He enters the place and heads to the answering machine to erase his humiliating message. He sees that Bridget has drawn a heart with their two names inside it. He takes the sheet of paper, believing that she has loving feelings for him. Bridget is actually hiding under the bed, which both physically and psychologically indicates her concealing what she is really up to.

 

Bridget continues to stage her plan. When Mike thinks she has returned from New York he goes to Bridget’s place and finds a planted round-trip ticket which falsely indicates she went to Miami, which is where the cheating man lives who she suggested they kill for money. After letting him pressure her she admits that she killed the man and then shows money in a suitcase (the cash she took from Clay) that she pretends was paid by the widow to commit the murder. He is shocked and she tells him that his provincial ideas of morality show that there is no love that he feels is worth killing for. She is again hitting at his fear of feeling “small.” She kicks him out and then, alone, laughs at her convincing performance.

 

At work Mike goes to Bridget’s office saying he is trying to accept what is happening. She says she has money now and nothing is stopping her from returning to New York. She has driven him to a desperate mental place and he bites on her bait, asking what he would have to do to be able to be with her. She says they must have a “partnership of equals,” which means he must kill a man for which the wife will pay a large amount of money. She says that will be the end of it, they will be equals, and they can live off the money in New York together. She seals the deal with a kiss and sits in his lap, a man’s most vulnerable sexual spot. But, he says that he doesn’t want to be with her that much to be like her, and leaves. 

 

However, Bridget has another ace up her sleeve (an apt cliche here since it is something hidden to con someone). She writes a letter pretending (what else) to be Trish, saying she is moving to Beston and will be working at Interstate, assuring him nobody has to know their secret. The letter states she just wants to be near him. Bridget is tightening the noose around Mike, making him desperate to find a means of escape. As Bridget expected, Mike shows up saying he will do what she wants as long as he never has to return to Beston and revisit his past.

 

To stop the observing Bert from following her, Bridget once more uses sexual preconceptions as a weapon. She calls the police and says that a man in a car tried to expose himself to her little girl. A police car pulls up and detains Bert as Mike picks up Bridget and they drive off. She has written him a “cheat sheet” to memorize so he knows what to do involving the killing of their victim. As he recites the instructions that Bridget wrote we watch his dramatized actions. Mike thinks he’s going after a guy named Cahill who is in his apartment where he meets with one of his extramarital girlfriends. Mike has a gun and a knife and he’s supposed to tell the man he’s just there to rob the place. He is to get the man to handcuff his arms and legs and then Mike is supposed to gag him. After that he is to knock him out and stab him to death (no noise).  There is one extra act he must do which is to turn out the lights. She says it’s a psychological act that denotes completing an “unpleasant chore.” Of course one should realize by now that she has sent him to kill Clay.

Mike is supposed to make sure the victim doesn’t make a sound. Why? Because Clay might say things that would lead Mike to realize it’s a set up. Indeed, Clay is able to say he just writes prescriptions and has nothing worth stealing. But Mike knows Cahill isn’t a doctor. Still, Mike is about to stab Clay but then throws the knife down and says out loud, “I’m sorry Wendy, I just can’t do it!” Clay’s eyes widen and he yells behind his gag, with realization, the name “Wendy.” He hops over to their wedding picture. Mike removes the gag and Clay fills him in about the stolen money and how she sent him to kill Clay. He realizes she seduced Mike, probably by the way he sounded disappointed he let her down. Mike says the mailbox has “Cahill” on it. Clay concludes that she is close by so she was able to relabel the mailbox. Everything is a deception. Clay is very smart and can see the chess moves Bridget is making. He says that she will call the cops and frame Mike for the murder. But, he realizes that she would have to check that Mike did the deed. So, Clay says there must be a signal. Mike realizes it is the turning out of the lights that would let her know Mike killed Clay. 

Outside, Bridget, calmly smoking a cigarette (she smokes often, showing her cool by using the film noir prop), sees the lights go off. After entering the dark apartment the framed marriage photo slides to her feet. Mike, holding the gun, turns on the lights and she says she wouldn’t have turned Mike in. Clay calls it “bullshit,” and comments that the suitcase she brought in would support her charade that the two reconciled and the jealous Mike came to kill Clay. But, he is still in handcuffs. Despite what Mike has learned, he doesn’t want to wholly believe that Bridget doesn’t care for him and so he didn’t free Clay, who is in the way of Mike being with Bridget. She always is prepared for contingencies and uses the fact that Clay is bound to empty a can of Mace down his throat, killing him. Mike says she isn’t human, but she says she did it for “us” (substitute “me” for “us”). 

 

Bridget has a backup plan as she probably thought Mike would not go through with the killing. She tells him that it will look like he killed her husband and then raped her. She starts to undress. As he is ready to call the police she uses her secret weapon, Trish. We get a flashback that dramatizes what probably happened with her and Mike in Buffalo. It turns out Mike married a transsexual who was still anatomically a male, and Bridget uses slurs and degrading language to stoke Mike’s shame and anger. Bridget knows he will want to retaliate by proving his manhood. He is irrational now after what has happened and wants to get back at Bridget. He hits her and then rapes her as he says he will play her sick game. Bent over the sofa, she calls the cops. The 911 operator hears her crying out that she is being raped and that her rapist killed her husband. 

Mike is in jail and meets with the Public Defender (Jack Shearer) who tells him that the keys he had to enter the apartment were duplicates which the prosecution will say he made. He says they need just one piece of hard evidence. Mike says there may be one thing. There is a cut to Bridget, enjoying her wealth by being chauffeured in a limo. She comes out of her old apartment building and burns that one bit of evidence, the mailbox label that reads “Cahill.” She then drives away after successfully completing her last seduction.

 

Yes, Bridget is an amoral creature. But one can’t help but admire her intelligence. She uses the accepted stereotypical role of the powerless woman to satisfy her own desires and avenge herself, although unlawfully and selfishly, against male dominance. 

The next film is The Ruling Class.