Flawless
Directed by Michael Radford
Demi Moore makes another comeback in Flawless. Unlike the failed cameo in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle where she looked bronzed and freakily lizard-like, here Moore gets to create a characterization: Laura Quinn, the sole female executive in the British diamond industry. She’s a secretive, tightly coiled businesswoman who becomes self-conscious—almost paranoid—due to her predominantly male environment. Coordinated in severe black pencil skirts and flared dresses of the early 1960s, Quinn’s personal style also works as the uniform of early feminist warfare. The look flatters Moore’s dark hair and brown eyes, yet there’s a disturbing drag-queen defensiveness about Quinn. Though not the least bit humorous, she’s sleek, enigmatic and dangerous; and Moore keeps her seriousness consistent, sympathetically implying that Quinn’s behavior results from internalized guilt. Yes, Flawless’ title is ironic.
In a clever narrative set-up, Quinn is introduced as a notorious celebrity being interviewed by a young female journalist who is blithely ignorant about women’s social history and takes contemporary female social advances for granted. An aged, gray-haired Quinn schools this journo-chick with an autobiographical flashback tale that takes the form of a film noir caper—a heist movie with feminist undercurrents. Quinn describes how she got back at 1960s corporate sexism. Her improbable method? A robbery of her own company, first planned by an unexpected ally: the working-class, virtually invisible janitor, Hobbs (Michael Caine), who has his own grudge against the powers that be.
After this year’s more conventional heist movies, the comedy Mad Money and the overwrought The Bank Job, there is special tension in Flawless’ concentration on Quinn and Hobbs. Their personal compulsions turn the crime into an illicit spree. Quinn and Hobbs’ eventual clash takes place Third Man-style in London’s sewers— but it’s almost a British theatrical symbol for the subterranean convolutions of oppression and capitalism. It’s the European complement to colonial exploitation. Unlike Ocean’s Thirteen, this formulaic heist movie has a streak of psychological perversity.
It’s as if Moore’s collaboration with screenwriter Edward Anderson and director Michael Radford uses Quinn’s criminal activity—and her chastened perspective on money, ambition, crime and jail time—to reflect the odd fortunes of her own career. She once was Hollywood’s zeitgeist figure. She was never as popular as Julia Roberts, but for a while Moore got attention for almost every Reagan-era gesture from Indecent Proposal to Ghost, G.I. Jane to Striptease—all fables of avarice and cultural mendacity. The best movie Moore made during her heyday was Alan Rudolph’s Mortal Thoughts, a superbly structured 1991 murder drama that revealed the dreams and anxieties beneath working-class realism.
Mortal Thoughts should have crowned Moore’s career the way Erin Brockovich did for Julia Roberts. After Moore’s bold, emotionally extravagant performance as the self-punishing singer in Emilio Estevez’s underappreciated Bobby, it’s clear Moore’s growth as an actress happens in the shadows of her celebrity.
Directed by Michael Radford
Demi Moore makes another comeback in Flawless. Unlike the failed cameo in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle where she looked bronzed and freakily lizard-like, here Moore gets to create a characterization: Laura Quinn, the sole female executive in the British diamond industry. She’s a secretive, tightly coiled businesswoman who becomes self-conscious—almost paranoid—due to her predominantly male environment. Coordinated in severe black pencil skirts and flared dresses of the early 1960s, Quinn’s personal style also works as the uniform of early feminist warfare. The look flatters Moore’s dark hair and brown eyes, yet there’s a disturbing drag-queen defensiveness about Quinn. Though not the least bit humorous, she’s sleek, enigmatic and dangerous; and Moore keeps her seriousness consistent, sympathetically implying that Quinn’s behavior results from internalized guilt. Yes, Flawless’ title is ironic.
In a clever narrative set-up, Quinn is introduced as a notorious celebrity being interviewed by a young female journalist who is blithely ignorant about women’s social history and takes contemporary female social advances for granted. An aged, gray-haired Quinn schools this journo-chick with an autobiographical flashback tale that takes the form of a film noir caper—a heist movie with feminist undercurrents. Quinn describes how she got back at 1960s corporate sexism. Her improbable method? A robbery of her own company, first planned by an unexpected ally: the working-class, virtually invisible janitor, Hobbs (Michael Caine), who has his own grudge against the powers that be.
After this year’s more conventional heist movies, the comedy Mad Money and the overwrought The Bank Job, there is special tension in Flawless’ concentration on Quinn and Hobbs. Their personal compulsions turn the crime into an illicit spree. Quinn and Hobbs’ eventual clash takes place Third Man-style in London’s sewers— but it’s almost a British theatrical symbol for the subterranean convolutions of oppression and capitalism. It’s the European complement to colonial exploitation. Unlike Ocean’s Thirteen, this formulaic heist movie has a streak of psychological perversity.
It’s as if Moore’s collaboration with screenwriter Edward Anderson and director Michael Radford uses Quinn’s criminal activity—and her chastened perspective on money, ambition, crime and jail time—to reflect the odd fortunes of her own career. She once was Hollywood’s zeitgeist figure. She was never as popular as Julia Roberts, but for a while Moore got attention for almost every Reagan-era gesture from Indecent Proposal to Ghost, G.I. Jane to Striptease—all fables of avarice and cultural mendacity. The best movie Moore made during her heyday was Alan Rudolph’s Mortal Thoughts, a superbly structured 1991 murder drama that revealed the dreams and anxieties beneath working-class realism.
Mortal Thoughts should have crowned Moore’s career the way Erin Brockovich did for Julia Roberts. After Moore’s bold, emotionally extravagant performance as the self-punishing singer in Emilio Estevez’s underappreciated Bobby, it’s clear Moore’s growth as an actress happens in the shadows of her celebrity.
