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BAD GIRLS: BASIC INSTINCT, BATMAN RETURNS© Sean Gallagher
Nov 25, 2003
Since melodrama has been around, whether in poems, plays, books, or movies, there have always been villains, and there have always been villainess roles (along, of course, with bad girls who end up falling for the good guy and changing their ways, but that's another story). And those villainess roles have come with a set of contradictions. On the one hand, of course, villains are fun to play, to read, and so on, and in most melodramas, a memorable villain is what helps make it memorable, more so than the hero character. So the actress playing it is able to do more than she might in a more saintly role. On the other hand, villainess roles (particularly the femme fatale roles of film noir in the 40's) hung on the male fear of females, and of sex, and at their most basic, they could be a way of hanging the most vicious of misogynistic fears on the story. Two roles in 1992 emphasized those contradictions quite clearly: Sharon Stone as Catherine Trammell in Paul Verhoeven's BASIC INSTINCT, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Tim Burton's BATMAN RETURNS. As JFK was the most controversial film of 1991, BASIC INSTINCT was far and away the most controversial of 1992. Thousands of women and gay activists protested what they saw as the misogynistic, homophobic movie made by Verhoeven and writer Joe Eszterhas, going so far as to give away the movie's ending at screenings. The result, however, was to give a mediocre movie far more attention than it deserved. Verhoeven and Eszterhas did not just hate women and gays, they hated everyone and everything - including plausibility. At heart - if that isn't a contradiction in terms for this movie - BASIC INSTINCT is a detective story, with Nick Curran (Michael Douglas), an alcoholic and troubled homicide detective (he's been involved in questionable shootings) investigating the death of a rock star. Curran discovers that the rock star's death was described in a novel written by Catherine Trammell, and in the film's most memorable scene, brings her in for questioning. Although he, everyone else in the interrogation room, and we the audience, can sense something dangerous about her (when told to put out a cigarette, she purrs, "What are you going to do, arrest me for smoking?"), Nick finds himself falling for Catherine. He also suspects she may be the killer, especially when he learns her next book is about a detective who falls for the wrong woman, and is killed by her.
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