This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

On not becoming archetypal FEMALE PERVERSIONS, based upon FEMALE PERVERSIONS: THE TEMPTATIONS OF EMMA BOVARY (by Louise Kaplan) is a good indie movie about a particular woman , also about women's world and female representation of the world. I enjoyed it a lot, and took it in with delight. The cast is really distinguished.I feared some experimental junk, but no, the movie is interesting and well—conceived and marvelously written, more interesting than any conventionally suspenseful flick.It's one of the few good American movies of the '90s. And the fact is that Streitfeld (unknown to me) rolls the ball. She gets the ball rolling and shows she means business.Very art-house, very indie, FEMALE PERVERSIONS is directed by Susan Streitfeld, written by Julie Hebert and Susan Streitfeld, and performed by Tilda Swinton, Amy Madigan (as 'Evelyn''s sister), Karen Sillas (as the psychiatrist, Renée, Evelyn's lover), Frances Fisher, Marcia Cross (whose fans should be aware that her tits are on display in this movie!), Paulina Porizkova (as Langley, Evie's rival). They're all pretty fine girls.In the nude scenes, the genitalia are unfortunately blurred; in exchange, almost each actress displays her tits—beginning with Mrs. Swinton, of course; then Amy Madigan, Karen Sillas, Frances Fisher, Marcia Cross—so, a tits parade. These girls honestly show what they got. Swinton, Sillas, Cross have awesome bodies.Mrs. Swinton is indeed beautiful and she delivers a fine performance. Poor Evelyn is a woman of career; she is beautiful, ambitious, angry, neurotic, insecure, sexually voracious, puzzled, confused, scared, morally degenerate; sexuality and career are the two coordinates of her life ,and she's consumed by her sexual desires. It's a nice, sharp study in comportment and reactions, an identity quest. The story has some kind of a psychoanalytical twist; Evie reaches to a childhood trauma. A bit naturalistic, a bit expressionist as well, the movie is a wholly feminine creation, hence somewhat viscous. There are grotesque and fancy touches as well. 'We all dream.' That's hardcore indie, babe.

Half of "Female Perversions" was of interesting female images a la Jane Campion and half was turgid and incomprehensible. Several people gave up and walked out in the middle. Interestingly, while my friend and I had come as we were in the mood for a dose of strong feminism and possible male-bashing, the pretty full audience for a matinée was 80% male definitely attracted by the beautiful naked female bodies casually on display throughout the movie, including quite a bit of explicit lesbian sex, which tends to put me to sleep as it did in "Go Fish." (You do get to see a glimpse of a naked Clancy Brown). We were the only ones sitting through the credits trying to figure the movie out and exchanging ideas about what the heck the images, let alone the story line meant. Best were the fantasies and nightmares as images of a successful woman's underlying insecurities.But what a cop-out to do what seemingly all contemporary fiction does this days - blame it all on parental child sexual abuse. And I thought the sexual interpretation of kleptomania had been discredited 50 years ago (at the turn of the century women shoplifters were cured with hysterectomies!). (originally written 5/24/1997)

Spoilers herein.This is a very ambitious film. It attempts to merge the cool abstract perspective of Hal Hartley with the visceral exploration of personal damage of Jane Campion. These two seem contradictory and indeed are not successfully combined here.But it has some very lovely and lasting images, enough so that the experience is definitely worthwhile. The project actually seems to have been conceived around a few of these set pieces, then loosely tied together with some narrative bits.When people take chances like this, they deserve our attention. They deserve as much risk in the watching as they took in the making. Not everyone believes in risky watching - but if you do, you can trust Tilda. The idea here is that women are victims of the roles thrust upon them. Tilda is more intelligent as an actress than is Streitfeld as a filmmaker so she is thrust into much the same situation. Watch how she uses the latter to illuminate the former. This is not the intended exploration of how woman misfit into society, instead concerns how they misfit into the film imagination.That's where the Hartley technique comes in. His films are about films, with lots of self comment and layer shifting. Not all of this worked for me, but enough did.The key failure is in balancing archetype and stereotype in presenting character icons. Here, we haveEve, who is unfairly reduced to a sexually confused parental rejectMaddie, her sister who gets a doctorate in her own pathology, emotional theftAnnunciata, a selfconstructed stripper/seducerRenee, a reluctant bisexual psychiatristLangley, a character that only women will appreciate, the womaneating weaselEmma, terminally hungry for loveEd, hypnotized by her commanding wombAn Earth MotherAn absent motherIf this sounds like Greenaway's `8 1/2 Women` taxonomy, it is. You might go there for a better purely abstract examination of this same notion of roles as prisons/perversions.If you merely need the visceral, `Ten Tiny Love Stories,' may be your station. The notion of roles and fantasy layering is also in `Heavenly Creatures,' and better. Here's a delicious irony. Notice that the first three women on the list are redheads? I'm convinced that one of the strongest automatic perceptions, one of the deepest, hardwired presumptions about the female image is associated with red hair. Would have been good to know if Streitfeld was an unwitting victim of this.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

What a piece of pretentious trash! It's so bad that even on TV, it's boring. How did people like Tilda Swinton, Karen Sillas and Amy Madigan become involved in this piece of unredeemable garbage is beyond me. La Swinton likes performing in bad, pretentious movies, she is really quite insufferable. The other two, beats me. It's humorless and pointless and about some mysterious kind of female suffering that is quite unbearable to watch and a figment of a seriously misguided feminist's imagination. Just watching it gave me PMS. Listed as executive producer is Zalman King, king of soft porn laughable films. Yuck.