”Single White Female” is what Hollywood now calls a ”hot button”
thriller-a film that exploits a common psychological weakness, such as a mother`s natural suspicion of a nanny who takes care of her children (”The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”) or a husband`s sense of sexual insecurity around a macho cop who is obviously attracted to his wife (”Unlawful Entry”).
By transforming these figures of mild anxiety into vicious, psychotic killers, the hot button thrillers both validate the audience`s least legitimate fears and pander to our most petty vengeful impulses. Once these characters have been branded as irredeemably evil and subhuman, they can be subjected to the most extreme forms of violent revenge-because, as the films are at great pains to point out, they ”deserve” all of the bloody abuse the heroes can now heap upon them.
In ”Single White Female,” which was adapted by director Barbet Schroeder (”Reversal of Fortune”) and screenwriter Don Roos from a novel by John Lutz, the hot button figure is an invasive roommate, Hedra Carlson
(another cold, precise performance from Jennifer Jason Leigh) who burrows into the life of glamorous Manhattan software designer Allison Jones (Bridget Fonda, increasingly open and appealing). The fear is one of a devastating loss of identity, as the shy, uncertain Hedra gradually absorbs the life and personality of the stylish, assured Allison-up to and including her feckless boyfriend Sam (Steven Weber).
Schroeder, who began his career as an enlightened producer to such leading European filmmakers as Eric Rohmer (”My Night at Maud`s”), Jacques Rivette (”Celine and Julie Go Boating”) and Wim Wenders (”The American Friend”), brings a decidedly un-Hollywood approach to the material, which is both the source of the film`s greatest aesthetic strength (it is unusually attentive to questions of character and form) and most crippling commercial weakness. American audiences, used to nonstop action, will probably grow impatient with Schroeder`s slow, nuanced approach.
Working largely within a single apartment set, expressively designed by Milena Canonero and beautifully lit by cinematographer Luciano Tovoli, Schroeder carefully explores the slowly evolving, increasingly perverse relationship between his two characters. As much as Hedra looks to Allison for advice on how to live and dress in the big city, Allison becomes more and more emotionally attached to her mousy new friend, who gives her the strength she needs when the men in her life (including a lecherous new boss, played by Stephen Tobolowsky) let her down. A voyeuristic fascination develops, with each woman spying on the other, looking through closets and diaries for the last, little secret that will mean total possession.
All of this material is impeccably performed and subtly presented, yet when it comes time to fire up the thriller elements Schroeder turns unaccountably clumsy. Plot points are planted as if with a dull and rusty shovel (the presence of an abandoned incinerator in the basement, the fact that voices can be heard through the heating duct that connects Allison`s apartment with that of a gay friend, played by Peter Friedman, upstairs), and the menace turns garish and blunt.
The movie`s final two reels consist of virtually nonstop murder and mayhem, often filmed so broadly that the violence becomes inadvertently comic. All that was effectively internalized and gracefully suggested in the film`s opening sections suddenly becomes gratingly explicit and crudely graphic, almost as if the climactic passages of ”The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” had been grafted onto Ingmar Bergman`s ”Persona.”
It is likely that we will be seeing more and more of these stylistic hybrids, as European directors, driven into financial exile by the collapse of their national filmmaking industries, turn increasingly to American stories and American sources of financing. It is not a tendency that brings out the best in either culture.
More Top Picks Best Pull On Work Boots For Men
”SINGLE WHITE FEMALE” (STAR)(STAR)(STAR)
Directed by Barbet Schroeder; screenplay by Don Roos; photographed by Luciano Tovoli; production designed by Milena Canonero; edited by Lee Percy; music by Howard Shore; produced by Schroeder. A Columbia Pictures release; opens Aug. 14 at the Biograph, Burnham Plaza, Esquire and outlying theaters. Running time: 1:47. MPAA rating: R. Violence, strong language, nudity, adult situations.
THE CAST
Allison Jones……………………………………………Bridget Fonda Hedra Carlson……………………………………..Jennifer Jason Leigh Sam Rawson……………………………………………….Steven Weber Graham Knox…………………………………………….Peter Friedman Mitchell Myerson…………………………………….Stephen Tobolowsky