Rating: 
Summary: COVERING NEW TERRITORY
Review: 'Female Perversions' is a difficult film to enjoy. It's confronting, cold, claustrophobic and on the whole disconcerting. But if you're the kind of viewer who enjoys being challenged, and appreciates films that don't pander to the lowest common denominator, then you'll love this. At last a film that reveals how patriarchy operates! Not simply by pitting women against men, but by pitting women against each other. Tough questions of intimacy between women are raised and explored in all sorts of ways: between sisters, between lovers, between a mother and a daughter.The presence of Tilda Swinton in any film is enough of a recommendation for me - if you're not already a fan, then this could be the film to convert you. She manages to guide the viewer into some pretty dark territory - oftentimes very surreal - but it's a compassionate and uncompromising performance. I wouldn't say this film is for everyone, nor does it qualify as 'light entertainment'. But I do think this is an important film that both men and women will appreciate. But be warned, if ever a film had a adult themes, it's this one: the adult world is revealed in all its ambivalent glory here, so keep this vid for after the kids have gone to bed.
Rating: 
Summary: ZZZZZZZZZZ
Review: A slow Saturday. Rented this video because it was a "Sundance" film which won critical praise. That usually indicates a film worth seeing. I sat through the whole thing waiting for it to take off. It never did. Boring. Boring. Boring.
Rating: 
Summary: Female Perversions
Review: At times it was very hard to follow, but I believe that is actually what the writer intended. It was entertaining and of good quality. Not really my cup of tea. I like a more upbeat storyline.
Rating:
Summary: A Film with an Agenda
Review: Despite a heavy Freudian hand, this movie generates its own discourse when it tackles feminine sexuality head-on. This is not a movie about gender so much as it is a movie about the principles of pleasure and guilt. The heroine treads the line carefully; her duality is the focus for much of the film's most angst-ridden scenes. While she uses her feminity with ephemeral ease during in court, to get out of a parking ticket, and to seduce her various lovers, she also rejects the images of feminity that seem to pursue her subconscious. She hands her lover a razor in one scene, only to read later that pubic hair is considered a symbol of woman's power. Her love-affair with the principles of power has alienated her from a perceived feminine identity, but has also given her the clarity of thought that redeems not only her life, but that of a weird young girl troubled by her impending womanhood. There is nothing oblique about this film; it is blatant in its cultural references and exact in its portrayal of pleasure and power as tools of identity. This is not a movie about female empowerment, but rather an exploration of how society has made those two words discongruous at the very root. Female Perversions ends up being as troubling and thought-provoking as any film I've enjoyed.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Lame
Review: Every once in awhile I like a little dose of film noir. Throw in a dark setting with some creepy characters and I'm good to go. But FEMALE PERVERSIONS fell short of the genre: it was just plain weird. Let's face it, if I wish to be confronted by surreal, one-dimensional people with absolutely no clue I can go to a professional wrestling match. Or go visit my attorney, take your pick. Yet this flick is even more meaningless than Dewey, Cheatum & Howe (my lawyer's firm), and its subsequent perversions are more demeaning than they are perverted. What's with the lead character in this movie? Tilda Swinton, a most fragile-looking beauty, is miscast in the lead role as a successful, aggressive attorney up for a judgeship by the Governor. She looks like a porcelain doll, and as we get to know her we find she's as unstable as the book shelf I put up the other day in my living room. She's plagued by some demented fantasies. . .or illusions. . .that supposedly have been repressed since her childhood, and for whatever reason she's into razor blades. Her boyfriend gets miffed so she has an affair with a woman. Why? She likes M&M candy. Why? Her fantasies include an overweight woman covered in mud. Why? She sleeps in a hammock. Why? She takes a bath with her sister. Why? She drives a really ugly Turbo converter. Why, oh why? Don't ask me. I don't know. Or care. Incidentally, Amy Madigan and Frances Fisher head a supporting cast of equally troubled souls. If there is some feminist symbolism to be culled from FEMALE PERVERSIONS it's lost on me; all I saw was a montage of mumbo jumbo. So what to do about my appetite for film noir? Ah, yes: a Three Stooges movie. That should do it.
--D. Mikels
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Lame
Review: Every once in awhile I like a little dose of film noir. Throw in a dark setting with some creepy characters and I'm good to go. But FEMALE PERVERSIONS fell short of the genre: it was just plain weird. Let's face it, if I wish to be confronted by surreal, one-dimensional people with absolutely no clue I can go to a professional wrestling match. Or go visit my attorney, take your pick. Yet this flick is even more meaningless than Dewey, Cheatum & Howe (my lawyer's firm), and its subsequent perversions are more demeaning than they are perverted. What's with the lead character in this movie? Tilda Swinton, a most fragile-looking beauty, is miscast in the lead role as a successful, aggressive attorney up for a judgeship by the Governor. She looks like a porcelain doll, and as we get to know her we find she's as unstable as the book shelf I put up the other day in my living room. She's plagued by some demented fantasies. . .or illusions. . .that supposedly have been repressed since her childhood, and for whatever reason she's into razor blades. Her boyfriend gets miffed so she has an affair with a woman. Why? She likes M&M candy. Why? Her fantasies include an overweight woman covered in mud. Why? She sleeps in a hammock. Why? She takes a bath with her sister. Why? She drives a really ugly Turbo converter. Why, oh why? Don't ask me. I don't know. Or care. Incidentally, Amy Madigan and Frances Fisher head a supporting cast of equally troubled souls. If there is some feminist symbolism to be culled from FEMALE PERVERSIONS it's lost on me; all I saw was a montage of mumbo jumbo. So what to do about my appetite for film noir? Ah, yes: a Three Stooges movie. That should do it.
--D. Mikels
Rating: 
Summary: .
Review: I give this movie real credit for the potency with which it portrays the psychological difficulties and dangers of being a woman in a society that prefers its women to be magazine-clipped dolls of aesthetic perfection, even as it criticizes itself for this. The neurotic hallucinations are quite affecting at times, and Eve is a fascinating character. However, although effective in these ways, this *is* a very pretentious-feeling film; and although I sympathize with intelligent feminism readily enough, this is very much a "feminist" film -- and any piece of art that is so directly interwined with a social movement, even if that social movement is a valid one, can only be so entertaining in my eyes, as I am not a fan of films that are clearly preaching, and are overly preoccupied with their own social agenda.
Rating:
Summary: Really weird but good!
Review: I thought it was so good. From the Klepto sister to the stripper and the chick ed who was definitely weird. Guys you got to see it.
Rating: 
Summary: "Perversions are never what they seem to be."
Review: In the film "Female Perversions" Eve Stephens (Tilda Swinton) is a young, ambitious lawyer. She's hoping for a judgeship, when her private life turns sour. Eve's resentful sister (Amy Madigan) is picked up on shoplifting charges, and Eve's boyfriend is making grumbling noises. Under the pressure, Eve begins to hear voices and experience debasing fantasies. Tilda Swinton is an interesting actress. Her facial features have a blank androgynous look, and she can handle extremely challenging roles ("Orlando", for example). At the beginning of the film, Swinton seems almost unrecognizable. Her glam looks fade as the film wears on, and this is both appropriate and interesting. I have this nagging suspicion that there's supposed to be a deeper meaning to this film. A quote from psychoanalyst, Louise Kaplan appears across the screen at the beginning, and less-than-subtle phrases appear without rhyme or reason during the film (on Eve's pillow and on a bench). These phrases hint at some message about the roles women are forced to accept in society, and, indeed, that is the premise of Kaplan's book "Female Perversions"). However, the message, if there ever was one, is buried deeply in this film. The film seems to play with idea of being part soft porn, and many of the scenes were gratuitous, hideous, and grotesque. All of this titillation weighs the film down and perverts the plot. Bizarre fantasy sequences are pervasive and annoying. If you want to spend two hours watching neurotic, stunted, and rather uninteresting characters abuse themselves and each other (peppered with the occasional naughty scene involving fancy lingerie), then perhaps this film is not entirely without purpose. I, for one, am a Philistine in this instance and loathed the film. I would recommend avoiding this pretentious stinker at all costs--displacedhuman
Rating:
Summary: Different genders, different perceptions
Review: My boyfriend and I saw this movie together and we saw entirely different films. This is the only movie that I know of that was based on a non-fiction psychology book (which I read years ago). Being female, I immediately identified with Eve, the main character, who must deal with the pressures of being better at her profession than the men in order to achieve any success, while at the same time having to worry about her looks and the younger, prettier, sexier woman (who may or may not be as smart) down the hall. The classic adage of men being judged by what they do and women being judged by how they look took an interesting twist in this film--Eve wanted and needed both. She had two conflicting and contradictory purposes in her life and had trouble reconciling them. I found the performance and dialogue from Frances Fisher's character to be the most compelling. She was utterly fascinating as a sexy woman who (perhaps) had the clearest insight into how a woman fits into this world. She advised the group of women, including a teen, to "be a chameleon," become whatever you have to in order to get what you need. Men, jobs, friendship--whatever the situation is, learn to adapt. Her dance and words were quite erotic and memorable. Perhaps by being ultra-feminine, she was the most "masculine" woman of the bunch because she knew how to get what she wanted through a cunning, sly and cynical view of the world. I would have liked to have seen this character developed more fully and given more screen time. The ending was quite touching and struck a strong emotional chord. Things aren't always what they seem. . . Too bad that all my boyfriend got out of this movie was that Eve's sister had a problem with stealing. He has never had to worry about having a younger, handsomer man move in on his professional territory, so he couldn't begin to relate to this film. It's the ultimate "chick flick" but not because it'll simply make you cry. If any man UNDERSTANDS this movie, I tip my hat to him. It's tough enough for women to comprehend it, and tougher still for a gender that has about as much in common with the characters and situations as they do with little green aliens from Mars. I liked this movie quite a lot and (with the proper homage to President Clinton) could really feel Eve's pain. It's no coincidence that the screenwriter chose this name for the protagonist. She truly represents all women, whether we are consciously aware of it or not.
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