For the longest time I’ve had a note in my phone titled The Female Erotic. It’s a list of films that all share women engaging in a (sometimes lethal) blend of sex, power, and money. It’s by no means a complete list, but I collected these titles because what they share is strong costume design that aid in their protagonists’ power through a very astute femininity. Three that naturally compliment one another are Female Perversions (1996), Claire Dolan (1998), and The Last Seduction (1994). Perhaps they could be called women-led noir, or erotic dramas with a slight thrill. They share female protagonists who are unreadable, impeccably dressed, and more importantly, DISSOLUTE.
Style does something to confuse and complicate what other people perceive as a person’s character. I am obsessed with the duality of looking like one thing and acting like another. The costuming of the three heroines in these films all work as a type of armor.
Linda Fiorentino as Bridget Gregory in The Last Seduction has thick dark hair that occasionally cascades over her eye á la Veronica Lake. We’re introduced to her in a matching cream waistcoat and structured blouse, talking circles around her fellow telemarketers. On the run after stealing $700k from her husband, she steps into a bar in “cow country” like a 1940s femme fatale. The local townies are wary except for a soft-hearted man sick of the predictability of his day-to-day. When you least expect it, life calls your bet.
Fiorentino is bad through and through, stealing money and making lovesick men do her dirty work. She goads the poor man trying to get her to show vulnerability, “You want to live bigger but there’s nothing you’d kill for.” She wears women in the workplace clothes and has a matter-of-fact approach when it comes to sex, often asking men to show her their offering. Her styling brings to mind the tailored suits of Lauren Bacall in To Have or Have Not, with Fiorentino’s husk to match. She berates the man, “You have a way of making a woman feel like a one-way ticket.”
Tilda Swinton in Female Perversions is striking, using her body and face as formidable weapons that take up the camera’s frame. Her beauty is so otherworldly, that each time I watch the film I find myself gasping at the close ups. It is a salve from the copy + paste features my eyes are so used to now. Swinton’s character is a lawyer on the way to judgeship, with an equally successful boyfriend and a wayward, kleptomaniac sister.
The film courts how people negotiate their “perversions” and how their deep desires can bleed into waking life. There are several dream sequences where Swinton’s nude body writhes, tied up with muslin cloth. It’s a credit to the costuming that Swinton’s nudity feels less erotic than when she is dressed in skirts and blouses. Swinton describes the costumes as “purity and crispness of line and colour that felt incredibly original and fresh,” adding that they “contributed such resonance and texture: they were a psychological portrait in themselves.” Bella Freud designed the clothes for Tilda’s character, with one look being designated as the character’s “lucky suit” that she ferries back and forth from the dry cleaners. It is a three-buttoned jacket with an A-line skirt that sits a few inches above Swinton’s knee, with a slight flounce to the hem. Freud says, “I had the fabric specially dyed. It was a Venetian wool in a palest oyster-coloured taupe with a sheer sheen.” It may be the most perfect skirt suit to exist (I am always on the lookout for anything remotely similar). Eroticism comes with the tension of her perversions rising to the surface and being revealed. With such a pristine canvas a slight smudge is all the more noticeable, like stray lipstick on her teeth or a loose thread on her favourite skirt.
Katrin Cartlidge plays the titular sex worker in Claire Dolan who brings a quiet elegance that disguises something steelier. The New York Times called the film, “elegantly gloomy,” but incorrectly states that Cartlidge “with her closely set dark eyes, thin lips and air of guarded self-containment, is just one step away from being plain.” She’s frequently outfitted in silks and wools, like the huge wool coat that conceals her silk dresses underneath. Though working with a softer silhouette than the other two heroines, it is for good reason. It’s implied that she is a high-end escort, having liaisons with businessmen in cool lighting and icy interiors. The armor here is of refinement, in contrast to the seedy business of paying back a large debt to her pimp. She flatters her clients and engages in sex with a noted detachment. They don’t care if she is sincere, as long as she is beautiful. Dressed to the nines, there is protection against the waft of immorality. She is tastefully unassuming like the actual kernel of Carolyn Bessette’s style before her image was decimated, then neutered.
With all three films, the costumes have the air of demanding to be respected or at the very least, valued. The clothes work as camouflage so each character can move privately, whether that be with illicit sex or grand larceny. As Fiorentino’s character announces, “Women lose 50% of her authority once people find out who she’s sleeping with.” With clothes like these, how can anyone tell?
Thinking about these films reminds me of the long-standing Hollywood rumour that Grace Kelly was a nymphomaniac. True or not, it is much fun to think of the perfectly coifed Kelly letting her hair down once in a while (She was a noted Scorpio after all). As Hitchcock notes after describing his preference for sophisticated blondes, “If sex is too blatant or obvious, there’s no suspense.”
“I deliberately photographed Grace Kelly ice-cold and I kept cutting to her profile, looking classical, beautiful, and very distant. And then, when Cary Grant accompanies her to the door of her hotel room, what does she do? She thrusts her lips right up to his mouth.”
(Italics my own)
Ciao for now!
yes to all this and also... isabelle huppert's silk blouses in the piano teacher
linda fiorentino....hot 4 ever