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.

The Silence of the Lambs

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

When Dr. Pilcher (Paul Lazar) at the Smithsonian starts to hit on FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), he asks her what does she do when she is not “detecting.” Her answer is, “I try to be a student, Dr. Pilcher.” In this multiple Oscar-winning 1991 film, (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Director), Clarice has two primary teachers - Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins (if you add a couple of letters, you get “lecturer”) and FBI Behavioral Science chief, Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn). One could be simplistic and say that Lecter is Clarice’s Darth Vader and Crawford is the Obi Wan Kenobi character. But, this movie is anything but simple, and both men use Clarice, as well as help her.

The opening shots take place in the FBI obstacle course outside Quantico, Virginia. The forest, with no easy path, can represent the many obstacles Clarice will encounter to live up to her name, as she tries to get “clear” of the frightening danger in her world, and possibly fly above it. Her last name is Starling, after all, and her hair is dark, like the color of that bird’s feathers. The starling is considered by some to be a pest, and Clarice must pester the circumstances surrounding her case to find the killer in this story. (We will get back to the “flying” motif later). A major impediment on Clarice’s educational road is sexism. As she runs or passes by males, there are individual and group looks (on the training course, at the Baltimore asylum, and in the West Virginia funeral home), of men who show a combination of lust and dismissal for her being among the predominantly male lawn enforcement community. Foster said that she wanted this role because she did not want to play another victim. Clarice uses her feminine side on Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald) at first to gain private access to Hannibal, but later ups her game by using legal threats to get him out of his way as he tries to punish her for not succumbing to his original sexual advances. Later she also takes charge at the funeral home full of male patrolmen, clearing the room so that the examination of the victim’s body can take place.

Crawford knows she is smart as she excelled in a course he taught at her college, and admired her courage to “grill” him on civil rights violations during the FBI’s Hoover years. But he deceives her, sending Clarice to try and get Hannibal to fill out a questionnaire as part of an information gathering survey of serial killers, when he hopes that Clarice will be able to seduce him into providing insights to help capture the at-loose murderer, Buffalo Bill. Crawford is actually using her youthful, inexperienced, status to activate Hannibal’s self-glorification by wanting to impress a new student. The fact that Clarice is physically attractive just adds to the draw. As Chilton says, Hannibal hasn’t seen a woman for several years, and Clarice is just the cannibalistic psychiatrist’s “taste,” which links the appetite for food with that of lust. Her strong response to Chilton is that she graduated from the University of Virginia, which is not a “charm school.”

When Clarice meets Hannibal for the first time, he is creepily standing in the middle of his cage, as if waiting for her, and ready to scrutinize her just as did the other males. But unlike the others, Hannibal is a sort of super anti-hero. He hardly ever blinks, as he takes in everything around him. His nostrils flare often and his powers of smell are equally elevated, knowing what lotion and perfume Clarice uses, even if not on that particular day. Later, he can even tell that she skinned her leg, and that the cut is no longer bleeding. He has theatrically exaggerated ways of speaking, slowing down sentences so as to carry weight, and of moving his hands, such as when he pulls documents out of the tray to his jail. All of this affectation sets him apart from others, probably showing that he sees himself as superior and separate from the mere mortals around him. He probably believes that he can carry out his crimes because gods don’t have to obey the rules of inferior creatures. Perhaps he devours his victims to show his dominance, and obliterates pretenders to greatness. Maybe in Hannibal’s mind, he raises his victims’ mediocrity by transforming them into epicurean delights.

He originally likes Clarice’s candor about sharing the vulgar comments of the inmate Miggs (Stuart Rudin), and is appreciative of her courteous nature. He makes references to Buffalo Bill, as if intuitively knowing that Crawford sent the impressionable Clarice (her temporary ID showing her novice status) to seduce him into volunteering his help concerning the hunted serial killer. It is interesting that in a small way Clarice turns the tables on Hannibal here because she appears to coldly consider why he didn’t take any trophies of his victims, but instead ate them. Hannibal doesn’t like being analyzed, and looks away, asking for the questionnaire. Of course the document does exactly that kind of “dissecting” as Hannibal calls it, and he becomes nasty, employing a Southern accent, calling Clarice a “rube” with “cheap shoes” who is “not more than one generation removed from poor white trash.” He says her ambition took her “all the way to the F - B - I.” His speech sounds sibilant many times, like a snake (Satan?) hissing. Hannibal's sucking sounds after talking about eating the census taker's liver makes him sound like a vampire, and a policeman later makes the blood sucker reference concerning him. Clarice challenges him by saying he sees a great deal, but seems unable to point his powers of observation at himself, because maybe he is “afraid” to do so. Possibly that is the only thing that can really frighten Hannibal, to really face his megalomania.

Hannibal is a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde character. He extols manners, and decides to help Clarice after Miggs throws his semen at her, shouting that “discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me.” He says ‘thank you” to the asylum attendant Barney (Frankie Faison), someone who treats him humanely, as opposed to Chilton who degrades Hannibal as a beast when he says “how rare it is to capture” a psychopath alive. Hannibal loves classical music and is an accomplished artist who hangs his sketches of Florence in his cell. He has a witty, dark sense of humor, that is at its heart condescending, and which fits with his superior attitude. He says that the death of his patient, Raspail, was the best thing that could have happened to him since his therapy was going nowhere. He sarcastically refers to the Buffalo Bill’s overweight victim as “Miss West Virginia.” He calls the dissociative inmate, “Multiple Miggs.” But, he can, as shown above, be nasty verbally, and he asks crude sexual questions of Clarice concerning Crawford and later the sheep rancher. Of course he is also brutally violent, savaging a nurse while at the asylum and clubbing and eviscerating policemen in Tennessee.

Hannibal points Clarice to a storage facility. She figures out that the name on the unit he gives is an anagram a little too quickly to be believable, but it illustrates her intelligence and her need to uncover what is hidden to reach the solution to the crimes. She must jack up the door to the unit, crawl under it, and she injures her leg in the process, which shows her desire to surmount obstacles in her way, like on the training course. This scene is in keeping with the theme of having to penetrate barriers or dig beneath the surface to be successful. She must break into the storage facility, and get into the car there. Raspail’s head is in a jar, but it is covered, and she must unveil it. There is a mannequin in the car, missing its head, dressed like a woman, which implies male transvestism. She must go through many locked doors at the asylum, and eventually explore behind doors at Bill’s place to become victorious.

In West Virginia, Crawford, like a teacher, quizzes Clarice on what deductions she can draw from the case files. He again uses Clarice by trying to get the local sheriff out of the way by saying he doesn’t want to discuss this type of “sex” crime in front of Clarice. She later calls him on it, saying that what he models “matters” because it devalues her, and sets a precedent for the other policemen. She discovers that the victim has diamond-shaped sections of skin removed from her body, and that there is a bug cocoon in the girl’s throat. Again, we have something buried or obscured from sight that Clarice must discover. She finds out that the cocoon contains a Death’s Head moth. One is also found in Raspail’s decapitated head. When she discusses these findings with Hannibal, he again takes on the role of lecturer, talking about how the morphing of a chrysalis into a winged creature symbolizes Bill’s wish to change into something beautiful. Clarice realizes that Hannibal knows who Bill is because the psychiatrist understands Bill’s motivations. Bill has kidnapped a senator’s daughter, Catherine (Brooke Smith). Hannibal makes a bargain to be transferred to another facility away from Chilton where he can have some time outside his prison in exchange for helping Clarice in the process by capturing Bill. Clarice says they worked out the deal with the senator.

It is interesting to watch the scene between Clarice and Hannibal as they negotiate his possible transferal and help with the case. He wants it to be a “quid pro quo” bargain. He will deliver information if she will talk about herself. As she relates the early loss of her mother and the killing of her law enforcement father, whom she adored, Hannibal takes on his professional role as psychiatrist, listening to a patient’s story of how her childhood shaped her. But what is a psychiatrist but someone who hears a person’s confessions? Hannibal turns his head away from Clarice when she discloses her personal history, and he looks like a priest behind a confessional’s door (but in this case it is a prison wall). However, his is a voyeur’s perspective, as if he can’t feel human emotions due to his own insanity, and can only experience feelings vicariously.

We don’t get much background on Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), but Hannibal sheds some light on him, and again, he has shades of gray in his character, too. The fact that Bill wants to change into something beautiful from something representing death shows that Bill sees himself as ugly and deadly, and he, too, like Clarice, wants to “fly” above his circumstances, like the moth. In fact, when he does his naked dance with a piece of elaborately designed material draped around him, he then raises his arms above him, looking like a bird with wings, as he plays a song with the lyrics, “I’m flying over you.” But, as Hannibal says, Bill’s desire to escape his male brutality by becoming feminine is a delusion because he is not a true transvestite. As Clarice smartly points out (and Hannibal gives her a good grade for doing so) transvestites are not aggressive. Hannibal says Bill was probably rejected from gender reassignment institutions for personality reasons. He tells Clarice, “Look for severe childhood disturbances associated with violence. Our Billy wasn’t born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse.” Billy wants to transform because he “hates his own identity.” He thinks he can do so by being a woman, but, Hannibal says, “his pathology is a thousand times more savage and more terrifying.” When we see Bill in his subterranean lair (basements and underground passages are in gothic tales because they indicate hidden, subconscious drives and dangers), he has the word “love” tattooed on his hand, (the scientists said that somebody “loved” the moth, showing Bill’s ability to love which has been displaced toward an insect) and cares for his cute little poodle, which he calls “Precious.” Not quite what you would expect from someone who is pure evil. The senator kept using Catherine’s name to make her more of a person than an object in a televised plea to the kidnapper. We see Bill trying to make the girl into a thing when he says to Catherine, “It rubs the lotion on its skin,” but Bill appears upset about what he is doing to the girl. At one point Bill yells down into the well, where Catherine threatens to hurt his captive dog if not released, “You don’t know what pain is!” This outburst can obviously be seen as a threat, but maybe Bill is also talking about the “systematic abuse” that Hannibal says Bill may have endured.

The deal that Crawford and Clarice made with Hannibal was a fraud (is Clarice learning deception from her supposedly benign teacher, Crawford?) Chilton, who bugged the conversation between Hannibal and Clarice, reveals this fact to Hannibal and made his own deal with Senator Ruth Martin (Diane Baker). As he talks with Hannibal the camera zooms in on a pen that Chilton leaves on the bed in Hannibal’s cell. It is interesting that Chilton warned Clarice not to give Hannibal anything, including a pen, and here Chilton is negligent enough to break his own rule. Hannibal wants to deliver his information about Bill to the senator in person. He is flown to her home state of Tennessee. He is restrained, and a grotesque mask is placed over his face. Unlike the children on Halloween who pretend to be monsters on the outside, Hannibal’s mask reveals the monster underneath. He is placed in a cage in a courthouse.

Because Senator Martin is furious with the FBI for using her name in a deal without her knowledge, Clarice must lie about being part of Chilton’s security team to gain access to Hannibal. She again must uncover truth behind a smokescreen as she sees that Hannibal’s name for Bill is a fraud, an anagram referencing Fool’s Gold. She wants him to tell her Bill’s real name, but he wants to know why she ran away from the relatives where she was placed after her father died. Clarice tells him that she woke to screaming and she saw that the slaughter of the lambs was taking place. She wanted to free them, but they wouldn’t run away. She took one, but it was too heavy and she couldn’t get very far, and that lamb, too, was killed. Hannibal explains the title of the film when he says to Clarice, “You still wake up sometimes, don’t you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs … And you think if you save poor Catherine, you could make them stop, don’t you? You think if Catherine lives, you won’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs.” The lambs symbolize the flocks of innocent people that Clarice wants to protect. Perhaps she followed her father into law enforcement to try to fight the forces that led to her dad’s violent death. After she is finished with her story, Hannibal looks like he has had a sexual climax from the sharing of the traumatic childhood experience. He closes his eyes and quietly thanks her, most likely for the emotional pleasure she has given him.

Hannibal becomes the teacher again as he lectures Clarice about Marcus Aurelius and “first principles” and “simplicity.” He says, “What does he do this man you seek?” in slow, dramatic, stress-laden speech. When she says he kills women he, like an instructor, corrects her. “No,” he says, “That is incidental.” After he tells her that Bill “covets,” he then asks how does he do this, and follows up like a teacher calling on a student by saying, “Make an effort to answer now.” He gives her the right response, just as many instructors must do when the student can’t come up with the correct answer. He tells her, “We begin by coveting what we see every day.” Chilton interrupts them (a variation on coitus interruptus?), and Hannibal touches one of her fingers with his as he hands her Bill’s case file. The image stresses the strange sexuality between these two. After all, she brought back his drawings to him, an act of kindness from the beauty to the beast, and when she says she came to see him on her own Hannibal maybe only half-jokingly says, “People will say we’re in love.”

After his encounter with Clarice in the courthouse, two policemen bring in Hannibal’s dinner. On the desk in the cage is a copy of Bon Appetit magazine, a comical item given Hannibal’s cannibalism, but also in keeping with his way of elevating inferior humans in the only way he sees that they can be, transforming them (Clarice and Bill wish for transformation) into a gourmet meal. But, there is also a drawing of Clarice holding a lamb, with the Christian crucifixion scene in the background. An entry on IMDb suggests Clarice and the lamb resemble Michelangelo’s Pieta, with Claice being Mary and the animal standing for Jesus. Hannibal ordered extra rare (appropriate for his tastes) lamb chops. Is he symbolically reenacting the sacrifice of Jesus who was known as the “lamb of god?” Or is he mocking Clarice’s attempts to protect the vulnerable in society by ordering the dead animal for his meal?

Hannibal with the help of the pen of the negligent Chilton, picks the locks on his handcuffs, and proceeds to murder the policemen. He hangs one of them, who he disemboweled, up on the side of the cage, with the officer’s arms spread out. Again, we have the appearance of a bird, or also an image of crucifixion. In any case, the scene suggest denial of rescue for the innocent or a chance an escape from violence. We have a recurrence of the covering up or hidden truth motif in that Hannibal pretends to be one of the policemen. He wears a different mask this time, the bloody face of one of the policemen that he has cut off and places over his own as a disguise. He removes this mask in the ambulance later and reveals his monstrous inner nature by killing the crew and a citizen for his clothes and money as he makes his escape.

Hannibal wrote on the case file that the scattered sites of where Bill’s victims were found seemed “desperately random.” Clarice tries to again uncover what the reality is behind the appearances. She discusses events with her friend, Ardelia (Kasi Lemmons), as they repeat Hannibal’s words to Clarice about coveting. The first victim was weighed down, and was the third body to be found. Clarice reasons that the purpose was to make her drift further away from her home, which means he saw her “every day,” as Hannibal put it. That means Bill lives where she did, in Belvedere, Ohio. (Interesting historical fact: the first victim’s name is Fredrica, and the real Buffalo Bill was married to a Louisa Frederici, which sound a great deal like the victim’s name. Does Bill murdering her in this story show how a serial killer would get a divorce?)

Clarice goes to Belvedere and unearths more information leading her to Bill. Keeping with the uncovering theme, she finds at Fredrica’s house a music box which has a hidden compartment with photos of a partially dressed Fredrica, revealing her sexual side. She sees that Fredrica was a seamstress. Clarice finds hidden (of course) behind a door, clothes material with diamond-shaped cutouts, similar to the pattern on the body in West Virginia. She now knows that Bill, in his weird way, is making a woman’s suit out of female skin to symbolize his changing gender. She calls Crawford about what she discovered, but he knows from checking at the Johns Hopkins gender reassignment department that Bill’s real name is Jame Gumb, and he had exotic insects delivered to a house in Chicago. The FBI goes to this house, but it too turns into an obstacle, a deceptive appearance, since nobody is there. Clarice goes to the home where Fredrica worked and that is where Bill actually lives. When she sees a moth flying, (appropriately by a Starling) Clarice knows she is in the killer’s presence. He escapes into the cellar and shuts off the lights. He wears night vision goggles which look scary, and reminds us of Hannibal’s frightening mask, mirroring the monster beneath. He is a denizen of the dark, scrutinizing Clarice, as did the other males in the story, but Clarice is up to the challenge. She swivels and shoots him when she hears him cocking the trigger on his gun. The bullet goes through a boarded up window, letting light in, and symbolically destroying the darkness of its demon inhabitant.

Earlier in the film, Chilton tells Hannibal how Clarice and Crawford scammed the killer, and that he was not going to see the birds and walk on a beach. But, at the end, Hannibal has escaped, like those birds, and is on a tropical island ready to get his revenge on the arriving Chilton for his “torments” by having him “for dinner.” Unlike Bill, Hannibal, a super villain - not a hero, has flown away from imprisonment. But what of our heroine? She gets the recognition for her ending Bill’s crime spree. She graduates from the training academy. But, at the reception, there is a cake in the shape of the FBI seal, and it is carved up. Is this an ominous image of the future (similar to the deconstruction of the spread made to look like an American flag in The Manchurian Candidate)?

Hannibal calls Clarice at her reception and asks, “Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?” Is Hannibal mocking her or really curious if she is no longer tormented by her dreams? We do not get an answer from her. This story does not depict elevating transformations. The iconic cowboy Buffalo Bill is turned into a serial killer. Where Clarice shot out the window in Bill’s dungeon, there is a small American flag knocked on its side. Maybe the gunfire is so loud in the United States that it is difficult for anyone to experience the peace found in silence.

Next week, the Oscars.