From: ph@cs.uow.edu.au (Phillip Herring)
Subject: 'Single White Female', a short review
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Wollongong University, Australia
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 06:17:50 GMT

"Single White Female" is a thriller about a woman (Allison,
played by Bridget Fonda) living in New York, who advertises for a
person to share her apartment, and ends up with a stranger called
Hedry (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh). It all seems pretty good
for a while; Allison has just broken up with her boyfriend and
Hedry seems supportive and helpful. Then Hedry goes nuts.

I'm impressed with this film because it's one of the very few 
really good films that Hollywood studios have made with stories that 
depend totally on female characters - characters that are convincingly 
female, where gender plays a significant part in the plot - but where
the women aren't stereotyped. I wouldn't call it a "women's film", 
nor is it a thriller with male characters cast with female actors in 
an attempt to be politically correct or exploitative. It's a good 
film, the characters are convincingly female, and both the characters
and the plot hang together very well.

So does the sex. There's a lot of sex in this film (and a lot of
violence). It's a film about obsessions and possession, and it
carries the viewer along on a current of sexual tension
throughout most of its length. This is (in retrospect) the film's
strongest point - the way that it handles the intrusion of a
stranger into the private life of an upper-middle-class woman
unused to life in the big city. Both actresses appear more-or-
less nude frequently, and there was only one place that I thought
this gratuitous. Otherwise, it adds to the sense of invasion.
It's invasion that cuts both ways, incidentally. Bad-girl Hedry
isn't the only guilty party in this film.

"Single White Female" seems to have just four weaknesses: one is
length. It's just a bit too long. However, I say this about nearly 
every film I see, so this may not mean anything.

The second weakness lies in Allison's character, and maybe its
portrayal by Bridget Fonda. There are times where it just doesn't
work for me. It's altogether possible that this has something to
do with the fact that Allison isn't a really interesting or appealing
person. I mean, she's a computer programmer (that should
excite all the computer geeks out there - hey everybody, a good-
looking, nude, female programmer!), a yuppie, and she's weak and
superficial at times. At the start of the film, we see her 
*photographing* prospective flatmates and taking notes, the former
activity striking me as just a wee bit chauvanistic. She also
programmes a time bomb into her software, which is good dramatically,
but still not very ethical behaviour. Paranoid, perhaps,
but not ethical. So I didn't have a lot of sympathy for her, and
sympathy for the heroine is pretty much necessary for a thriller
like this to work to full effect.

Maybe I'm overstating the importance of this issue. Another way
of looking at it is that none of the characters are perfect. They
all have flaws and weaknesses, so maybe that's a point in its
favour. Chalk one up for realism, perhaps?

The third weakness lies in the violence, which is moderately
graphic, but which at times doesn't look convincing. The scene
with the stiletto was particularly unlikely. These scenes are
fundamental to the plot but could have been handled better, I
think.

I also thought that the ending was spoiled by a superfluous
voice-over that added nothing that the audience wouldn't have 
already worked out. This, however, is nitpicking.

All in all, I liked this film. Certainly it put me off getting
someone in to share my place after my ex moved out a while back.
You never know who you'll end up with.

My rating: worth paying full price at the cinema.

-- 

-- Phil.
==========================================================================
        These opinions (c) 1992 Phil Herring (ph@cs.uow.edu.au)
Newsgroups: aus.games