Here is a largely unknown, unheralded movie. Streep herself apparently thought little of it, calling it "a mistake" and noting that she got to spend a lot of time with her infant as it was shot near her home in NYC. I differ. Perhaps her effortless nonchalance allowed her raw talent to shine so brightly.
It is a gem of a film. A merciful 83 minutes! (In film as in all things, "small is beautiful.") Made in 1982 in a drab, dark Manhattan, which suits me as I savor many memories there and love movies set there. It is taut, clear, austere; a psychological thriller worthy of Hitchcock. Roy Scheider plays a tight, repressed psychoanalyst, just divorced, quietly in crisis. A playboy patient is stabbed to death. Streep shows up as an ex-girlfriend, who is very possibly the murderess. She is strikingly lovely, in an ethereal, surreal fashion. Fair skinned, slightly exotic, impeccably proportioned, she is so pronouncedly sweet, innocent, and vulnerable that she almost has to be (the intelligent viewer sees immediately) a psychopath. But maybe not! As evidence increases that she is the culprit, she radiates all the more a virginal luminosity that can only be direct from heaven or hell. The poor psychotherapist (along with the male viewer) is without defense!
She is easily the best femme fatale I have every known! (And I have never known one I didn't like!) She is the type that drives you crazy because she is either very good or very bad but you just cannot tell...until the very end. (Sorry, Reader, there will be no spoiler here. It is on Prime.)
Such a classic femme fatale is a heightened expression of three prime manifestations of the feminine to the masculine gaze: the innocent, fragile, precious, vulnerable one to be rescued or protected; the comforting, pleasure-giving, object of desire reminiscent of maternal enclosure; and the ominous, evil, murderous seductress. Blend them together and you have a powerful cocktail!
First: the "daughter" figure: virginal, fragile, precious and vulnerable. This appeals, powerfully, to the paternal instinct. She must be protected or rescued. This is the most powerful passion of the mature, virile man. And so, the psychologist, throwing prudence to the wind, engages in the investigation, at his own peril. The ambiguity becomes unbearable: she is so sweet that it must be a con job.
A contrasting, flaming femme fatale is the Kim Basinger prostitute in LA Confidential. She is blatantly shamelessly seductive; even as she is the victim of violence. The Russel Crowe detective, who had watched his own mother be abused, is a combustible combination of rage against the abuser and lust: the chemistry between them is nuclear.
The second manifestation is that which awakens desire: erotic, romantic, covetous, deeply emotional. Here the child-bearing-age-woman draws the man to herself, promising pleasure, comfort, and ecstatic inclusion. We recall here the explosive appeal of the feminine hour glass, figure 8 shape: petite in the manner of the precious one but full and reminiscent of infantile euphoria. These lead of course to the third: the dark mother, the threatening feminine.
It is perhaps more fear of his own cravings that awakens dread in the male heart and psyche. The woman becomes so desirable that the man loses all control, he is powerless, overwhelmed, without resistance to the woman's seduction. In contrast to the strong father figure awakened by the first feminine manifestation of powerlessness, here the man becomes passive before the machinations of the clever beauty.
Here we recall the original fall of Adam. He is not participant in the initial act of sin, the engagement of Eve with the serpent, Lucifer. Adam is strangely absent from that prime drama. He is drawn in, secondarily, by the more dominant Eve. He puts up no resistance, but submits at her mere suggestion.
Like Eve in the initial drama of the human story, the femme fatale dominates the noire film. The male protagonist, like Adam, is secondary, derivative, passive.
By a happy coincidence, the Vatican just released a new document clarifying our Catholic devotion to Mary. It reviews the history, highlighting Mary's maternal love and care for us, her perpetual virginity and purity, and her preeminence as first among us as recipient of and collaborator in salvation. It discourages the use of controversial titles "co-redemptrix" and "mediatrix" of graces. These tend to lift Mary up into participation in the divine, distancing her from us, and possibly obscuring the absolutely unique salvific role of Christ.
We might contrast the image of Mary with the femme fatale. She also is small, humble, vulnerable, virginal. She also is mother, source of comfort, protection, assistance. She is virgin mother, mysteriously. But the shadow of evil that haunts the femme fatale is entirely absent from Mary. She is the answer to the complicity of Eve in sin. She is without sin, from conception, entirely holy all throughout childbirth and with Jesus on Calvary, after his rising, until Pentecost, and finally assumed into heaven.
The allure of the femme fatale, life-giving mother and yet virginal innocence, is in Mary purged of sin and illuminated with the beauty of purity and holiness. She is not the primary protagonist in the drama of our salvation. But she gets Oscar for incomparable actress in a supporting role!
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