Women in Trouble
Directed by Sebastian Gutierrez
Runtime: 92 minutes
The 10 women—mothers, porn stars, hookers, bartenders, stewardesses, shrinks—of Sebastian Gutierrez’s interconnecting stories in Women in Trouble may not get into very inventive scrapes considering the title and the cast, but a lucky alchemy of writer and cast turns what could have been an indie bore into something surprisingly uproarious. Snagging the industry’s strongest supporting actresses and then giving them star turns was a canny casting strategy, one that vastly improves Gutierrez’s frequently recycled stories.
Take Carla Gugino, for example. A dynamite stage actress, she’s been relegated to mediocre roles in movies for much of her career (save a stellar turn in the underrated Snake Eyes). But as Elektra Luxx, a porn star who has just discovered that while she may not have AIDs, she is definitely suffering from the STD called childbirth, she’s mesmerizing, by turns sexy, wise, and weary. Plastered in thick makeup and crowned by a platinum cascade of fake curls, Gugino embraces and then shatters the gold-hearted hooker stereotype within her first 10 minutes on screen.
The rest of the cast all take their turns exploding female archetypes, with varying levels of success. Sarah Clarke can do very little as a cheated-on therapist, while one longs for more of Marley Shelton’s naughty stewardess, who tries to become a member of the mile high club with a rock star (Josh Brolin) with disastrous results. And Elektra’s co-star Holly (Adrianne Palicki) goes from dumb-blonde cliché to uncomfortable in the course of one squirmy, hilarious monologue about why she can’t perform cunninlingus without vomiting.
Gutierrez’s knack for detailed back stories like Holly’s are one of the ways he manages to keep us interested in even his most threadbare plotlines (one has been around since Edith Wharton). The title may promise trouble and then deliver the usual array of death, adultery, gangsters, and broken elevators, but the movie is funny in ways that are becoming increasingly, frustratingly atypical. These women, confused and rattled and downright ditzy as they may sometimes be, aren’t the two-dimensional wives, caretakers, or whores that most ensemble films offer actresses. They may all end up in their underwear at some point or another, but it’s the men in their lives who meet the most violent and disastrous fates. Smart and sexy in equal measure, Gutierrez’s women (and his Women) manage to elude real trouble by remaining grounded, even as their lives veer into the dizzying heights of comic absurdity.
