Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 01/31/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Whore (Ken Russell, 1991)

Theresa Russell in Whore

Cast: Theresa Russell, Benjamin Mouton, Antonio Fargas, Elizabeth Morehead, Daniel Quinn, Sanjay Chandani, Jason Saucier, Michael Crabtree, John Nance, Danny Trejo, John Diehl. Screenplay: Ken Russell, Deborah Dalton, based on a play by David Hines. Cinematography: Amir Mokri. Production design: Richard B. Lewis. Film editing: Brian Tagg. Music: Michael Gibbs.

The bluntness of its title suggests that Whore might be a serious film, a necessary corrective to the typical Hollywood treatment of prostitution, on a par with Lizzie Borden's 1986 Working Girls. And I think at some point that was its intent, especially with the hiring of a well-known actress like Theresa Russell. But in the hands of screenwriter-director Ken Russell, it turned into a bore, hammering home its message about the sordid lives of streetwalkers and their pimps, while giving it an entirely inappropriate glossy look. It also features an uncommonly bad performance by its star, who somehow can't find a way to deliver her lines that doesn't feel like a caricature of the tough girl she's supposed to be. The emotions she's meant to evoke feel fake. The screenplay, which forces her to talk directly to the camera, also undermines any sense of actuality to what she's saying. It's an 85-minute film that feels twice that length.