Neo-Noir Watch: The Last Seduction (1994)

Watched:  05/06/2023

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Dahl

Well, at long last I got around to The Last Seduction (1994).  

I can see how well-meaning dopes would have cast Fiorentino in Jade on the heels of this movie, possibly trying to borrow some of the heat she brings to this film, but the two movies are worlds apart, and one is a 90's indie darling playing to a punchline, and the other is a shiny studio movie that feels like a hastily jotted-off airport-book thriller.  

The Last Seduction reads more like a Goodis novel or Jim Thompson book, with low-level crooks twisting and turning over each other and innocence is a commodity of dubious value.  Fiorentino plays a con who encourages her husband (Bill Pullman) to take part in a risky drug deal, earning a huge amount of cash.  After a bitter argument in which Pullman slaps Fiorentino, when he goes to shower, she takes the money and runs.  

Headed for Chicago, Fiorentino stops off in a small town in upstate New York, where her attorney advises her to lay-low while she runs a divorce through.  She picks up Peter Berg in a bar (who believes he's picking her up).  Berg has recently returned from Buffalo, where things didn't work out.  He's a bit bummed as he thought he was the guy who was going to get out of this one-horse town.  Now he's met someone from NYC who seems like his ticket out.

Fiorentino schemes.  A lot.  

This film was Fiorentino's big breakout and - looking at IMDB - her career peak as far as notices went.  She'd appear in films for another 15 years or so, before retiring from in front of the camera.  Berg would go on to be a highly successful producer and director, and I'd frankly forgotten he was a successful actor.

SPOILERS

It's certainly an interesting film and a great piece to study regarding "where were we in the 1990's vis-a-vis women in film?".  The movie requires a certain level of belief by the audience that Fiorentino's character isn't doing the things she's obviously doing because no one (read: women) could be capable of those things, and the audience expects that movies end with the two leads falling in love.  It's all unspoken, but it's there.  Otherwise, I'm not quite sure what we're looking at.  In any case, it's largely a movie about a very dumb guy who doesn't know he's dumb being led around by his nose by a very good looking, very mean woman (which, fair enough).  In this way, it's definitely a neo-noir - with the femme fatale pushed front and center.

That said, it felt sort of clunky watching the movie in 2023.  There's no subtlety or nuance.  There's no mystery of what Fiorentino is up to, so it's just watching Berg be a dope for 2 hours.  Which, honestly, I remember being a thing in the 1990's as being pushed to audiences so movies would work, but no specific examples leap to mind.  To highlight one character, we were fine with another character just falling all over themselves.  

But at no time do you think "well, maybe she is really falling for this guy" or "I bet he flips the script on her".  Instead, it's just watching our femme fatale go about her scheming, hoping things work out, and, indeed, it does.  The "twist" at the end is that Berg realizes how thoroughly he'd been set-up, but that's also something we see at every move.  It's more a list of "oh, yeah, I guess that did happen" than "ha HA!  Wow, what a twist!" at the end of the film.

This is not Body Heat.  By design.  We know Fiorentino is a sociopath from jump.  So...  I'm not sure, exactly, what her arc is other than "she does many things people do not expect".  Which is a story of sorts, but I'm not sure what the takeaway is other than not to be a small-town loser who gets big ideas?

I mean, the movie feels like a comedy in many ways, with that last scene the punchline.  But it's a long walk to get there.  I see Ebert in reviews referring to Fiorentino's performance as dry-humor, and that's right.  But I don't see anyone referring to the film as a dark comedy, which it mostly feels like it is.  To me.  But I don't know how else to read how dopey Peter Berg is in the film.

That said, released in the mid-90's, we hadn't seen many women's roles that would have allowed for this sort of thing since the post-WWII heyday of noir.  And we wouldn't have paired it with overt sexuality during that window, just the deeply implied sexual whiles of the femme fatale (see: any of the big name noir films from Double Indemnity to Out of the Past).  But we knew those women were trouble, but we weren't sure how.  This movie has no secrets or mysteries other than what happened in Buffalo, which, when told, is...  silly?  Unbuyable?

I largely liked the film, with some significant caveats.  It feels like it lifts the "ABC" scene from Glengarry Glenn Ross for it's opening, and the twist reveal of what happened in Buffalo from The Crying Game, both of which would have been on the minds of movie-goers two years after they came out, and then made it into homes via cable and VHS.  

The challenge of noir is that:  there's a lot of it, and it does a lot of the same thing.  So you're going to draw down comparison by existing.  And you're never created or being viewed in a vaccuum.

There's no question that Fiorentino is great.  She is.  And I'd argue that Peter Berg gives it his all.  Bill Nunn as the private eye is good, and Bill Pullman is Bill Pullman.  The movie leans into the "erotic" bit of "erotic thriller" with an eye less to sexiness and more to grinding, angry sex, but there's no question about the seductiveness of the proceedings. 

I know I'm picking at the movie but (a) welcome to this site, and I have bad news for you, and (b) I actually mostly liked the film.  I'm just surprised less that it has the reputation it got in 1994, but that it seems like this movie bubbles up a lot in conversation, that this movie is still as relevant now as then.  What I think is that it helped lay the groundwork for what you could do with women in film and television, and Fiorentino just surprised the hell out of everyone.  But I'm not sure it holds up as noir, thriller, mystery, etc... all that well.  I do think it holds up as a vantablack comedy of sorts, if you expect to never really laugh.  And that's a feature, not a bug.  

Apparently there's a Last Seduction II (which, technically, makes this film The Second to Last Seduction) which has none of the original cast and has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and now I am deadly curious.