Lipstick (1976) Anyone watching this today, 47 years after its initial release, might generously admire its all too prescient depiction of a brutal rape and its aftermath.
Close to half a century later, this swift, exploitive, pulpy, semi-horror movie still holds the power to hit you like a punch to the jaw. It plays like an elongated rogue episode of "Law And Order-Special Victims Unit".......especially in its depiction of an oily, odious, sociopathic rapist, and a justice system then designed to blame the rapist's victim for 'asking for it' while fully exonerating him.
So do I credit this brief, nasty little movie with the Nostradamus-like power to predict what would evolve into women's ongoing battle (and eventual victories) over rape-culture misogyny? Did international mega-producer Dino DeLaurentis really tap into the zeitgeist of the future when he slapped this movie together?
Nah. This is the 1970's we're talkin' about. The only thing Dino cared to predict was the fattening of Dino's bank account. And in "Lipstick" he combined what he considered not one, not two but three can't miss elements to rake in the big bucks.
#1. Supermodel du jour and Flavor-Of-the-Month Margaux Hemingway, a tall, big-boned Idaho country girl, and granddaughter of Papa Hemingway himself. And inexplicably ,a rather simple, uncomplicated young woman who stumbled into fashion modeling an acting, though not particularly skilled or talented in either field.
#2.A storyline that not only features a lengthy scene of Hemingway viciously beaten and sodomized, it throws in, as a bonus, the same fate (albeit offscreen) befalling Hemingway's gentle, virginal 14 year old little sister.....played by, of all people, Hemingway's gentle, virginal, 14 year old little sister Mariel.
#3. Revenge! Like Charlie Bronson, Tom Laughlin, Joe Don Baker before her, Margaux's fully armed, dangerous......and pissed.
What we have here is no great treatise on women's plight in a world of men.......
Not this movie. All this movie wants to do is treat you to the spectacle of a beautiful, entitled woman bounced off the walls and sexually assaulted in the most painful way imaginable...and then humiliated and demeaned in a courtroom, despite the best efforts of her furious, outraged attorney (Anne Bancroft)........and then juice your adrenalin level to the max at the sight of Hemingway taking out her and sister's rapist 'Death Wish' style......with multiple shotgun blasts.
In other words, a fast buck, exploitation thrill ride similar to Roger Corman's drive-in movie quickies........and for villainy, you can't beat rising star Chris Sarandon, , fresh from his showstopping role in "Dog Day Afternoon", as the evil simpering, sociopathic rapist.
In 1976, this movie was never concocted as a serious reflection of the plight of women under the eternally horny male gaze. But all these decades later, its very immediate in-your-face crudity, and the ahead-of-its-time sheer brutality of its rape sequence give the movie the kind of additional power that even Dino DeLaurentis couldn't have imagined.
It's ironic that what 1976 audiences caught wind of in the film wasn't its battle cry against rape and the judicial system's treatment of victims. What caught the zeitgeist then.....was that Margaux Hemingway couldn't act her way out of a paper bag but her kid sister Mariel was a genuine undiscovered gem and a a star in the making.
Go figure......."Lipstick" still remains as topical as ever not only in its icy treatment of sexual assault, but in its angry satirical indictment of pop culture objectifying of women.....another element thrown in for visual splendors.....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
No comments:
Post a Comment