‘90s Thrillers #002: The Last Seduction
Through some combination of happenstance, the style at the time, or my own unconscious desires, I’ve managed to pick another erotic thriller for part two of this project. John Dahl’s 1994 feature is a totally different beast to Basic Instinct, though. It’s a more grounded, far more indie affair, made on a fraction of the budget that Paul Verhoeven had to play with, and bringing in an even smaller fraction of its box office. Finances aside, it was a critical hit and a real cult artefact to this day thanks to its utterly black heart and an all-time great femme fatale performance from Linda Fiorentino.
The Last Seduction shreds nerves from the off. Fiorentino plays Bridget, a ball breaking telemarketing manner with dreams of bigger and better. Her doctor husband makes some quick cash selling hospital drugs on the street, but after he hits her, she absconds with the money and flees New York City for the sticks. While the jilted husband tries to track her down, she shacks up in a small town with a lovelorn sap, and plots her next move.
I’m quite an admirer of John Dahl simply because, for the first 15 or so years of his career, he seemed to place all his eggs in one neo-noir basket. I love all things noir, but were I a fledgling director, I don’t think I’d have the chutzpah to pledge myself completely to a genre whose heyday was a good three decades prior. Impressively, though, he climbed the ladder, getting solid star power in Nic Cage and Dennis Hopper in 1993’s enjoyable Red Rock West, and sealing his cult status with the darkly comedic poker flick Rounders. While he hasn’t made a movie since 2007, he can boast directing credits on most of the good-to-great TV dramas of recent times.
He’s a master of deploying tension and playing with power dynamics. Early in the film, Bridget swans into a dive bar in Beston, Buffalo. While she seems to be walking herself into trouble with the effrontery of her Manhattanite ways, within moments she has bent the town to her will. In a semi-you couldn’t get away with that nowadays fashion, a lot of Bridget’s problem solving leans quite heavily on her feminine wiles, to put it politely. One scene featuring Bill Nunn as problem solver Harlan is given particular crackle by the racial dynamics, which Dahl examines shrewdly without hammering home his point. He’s Black, she’s white, they’re alone together in a car, and when the backwoods law enforcement come onto the scene, Bridget’s quick to use every advantage she has.
Not unlike Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, the film hinges on an actor with sufficient presence to pull the character off. Fiorentino is hypnotically good in the lead role. She’s convincing as someone completely without feeling or remorse, but her charisma and cool is so great that you can’t help hoping she gets one over on the saps she manipulates and screws over. The greatest seduction job she pulls off is on the audience; beyond her femme fatale sexiness, she’s just so good at being bad, scheming not just to get what she wants but for the sheer love of the game.
Fiorentino evidently felt a great connection to the role; she campaigned heavily to get the part, and was involved in coordinating some of the sex scenes. I think that helps to keep The Last Seduction from ever feeling exploitative: there’s a lot of skin, but aside from being more or less integral to the plot, you never get the sense that the leading lady has been the least bit coerced into stripping down. That she didn’t have too much of a career beyond this is a damn shame (the cause seems to be a combination of press railroading and some weird business involving an FBI operation and a romantic entanglement which seems worthy of its own noirish flick).
While Fiorentino is the lynchpin here, there are some neat supporting turns. The juiciest role goes to Pete Berg, better known for directing all those awful looking films about Mark Wahlberg being A Brave Man In A Dangerous Job (he also made the Friday Night Lights movie, to be fair to him - one of cinema’s finest tear jerkers). As Mike, Bridget’s small town boy, he’s given a decent amount to work with. Mike’s desperate to escape the confines of Beston, seeing the glamorous Bridget as his ticket out of there, and only far too late realises that he’s snared himself in a far trickier trap. Berg’s good as an everyman grappling with his morals, and it doesn’t hurt that he seems genuinely scared of Fiorentino.
Bill Pullman is effectively smarmy as Bridget’s estranged husband Clay. You forget how effective the uber-whitemeat Pullman can be as a smarmy dickhead. He’s only a few years away from playing the president in Independence Day, but with his sweeping hair and all-American looks, he nails the entitled, highly strung cuckold character. And no modern noir would be quite complete without the late, great J.T. Walsh. One of the finest ever gleefully sleazy character actors, he doesn’t get a great deal to do as Bridget’s amoral lawyer and sounding board, but seeing the big man sat in an office chair chewing over hard boiled dialogue will always bring a smile to my face.
The film’s not without its stupid bits. For all its high aspirations, The Last Seduction has the heart of a potboiler, and there are some narrative shortcuts here and there. Most notably, the scene in which Clay figures out Bridget’s Beston alias (she likes New York and can write backwards, so naturally adopts the sobriquet Wendy Kroy) is properly stupid. Any film built around one character pulling off a number of schemes always walks a high wire act - there are only so many strokes of luck you can give your protagonist before credulity is stretched to breaking point.
The Last Seduction ultimately falls on the right side of that line, though. The film is so entertaining and with such fine ingredients in its cast, style, and pacing that the contrivances of the script never interfere with our engagement. It’s also in its way quite a bold film for its ruthless lack of moralising. Bridget gets up to some unspeakable stuff, and it’s impossible not to enjoy it. Does that make Dahl’s movie a feminist text? I wouldn’t want to say. But as far as saucy cinema goes, it’s superior stuff.
