The Last Seduction is the 1994 erotic neo-noir thriller directed by John Dahl, featuring Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg, and Bill Pullman. The film is produced by ITC Entertainment and distributed by the October Film. Fiorentino's performance resulted in talks about Oscar nominations, but he did not qualify because the film was aired on HBO before it was released to the cinema. Film and ITC Entertainment October sued the Academy, but could not get Fiorentino eligible for a nomination.
The 1999 sequel The Last Seduction II did not feature the original player and starred Joan Severance as a Fiorentino originating character.
Video The Last Seduction
Plot
Bridget Gregory works as a telemarketing manager in New York City. Her husband, Clay, is practicing being a doctor and deeply indebted to the loan shark, so he arranges to sell stolen pharmaceutical cocaine to two drug dealers. The deal becomes tense when the buyer pulls a gun, but for Clay, they end up paying him $ 700,000. Clay was left shocked, and on his return to the house he slapped Bridget, after he insulted him. He then stole cash from him, and escaped from their apartment while he was bathing.
On his way to Chicago he stopped at Beston, a small town near Buffalo. There he met Mike Swale, a local man returning from a whirlwind in Buffalo, whom he refused to talk about. She tries to pick Bridget up, and she starts using it only for sexual satisfaction while living in the city. Mastering the play of words and writing mirrors, and immediately returning to his hometown in mind, Bridget changed his name to Wendy Kroy, and got a job at the insurance company, where coincidentally, Mike worked. Their relationship was disrupted by his manipulative behavior and the fact that he fell in love with her.
When Mike told him how to find out if a man had an affair with his wife by reading his credit report, Bridget created a plan based on the sale of murder to a rigged wife. He suggested they start with Lance Collier, the cheating husband, the grieving wife who lives in Florida. This proved to be the last straw for Mike, and he left her alone in his place after a fight. Elsewhere, Clay's thumb was broken by the loan shark for not paying the loan. Worried about his health and in financial trouble, he hired a private detective, Harlan, to take money from his wife.
Harlan scrolled through his mobile area code, made a trip to Beston, and greeted Bridget at gunpoint just after his argument with Mike. Bridget succeeded in killing Harlan, on his way back to his place, and tricking the police into closing the case without further investigation by using local racial prejudices to his advantage. Bridget then continues Mike's manipulation and pretends to travel to Florida to kill Lance Collier. Bridget went to Buffalo to meet Mike's ex-wife, Trish. Bridget showed Mike the money she stole from Clay, to reassure her that she had taken a rebate from life insurance payments from a new widow, as a payment for the supposed killing.
Bridget tells him that he has done it so they can live together, then tries to persuade her that he must also commit a similar murder so that they will be balanced, and to prove that he loves her. He tried to talk to Mike to kill a tax attorney in New York City, who deceived the old ladies from their homes. At first he rejected the idea, but then agreed after receiving a letter from his ex-husband who said he would move to Beston. The letter was faked by Bridget to change his mind.
Mike went to New York and broke into the attorney's apartment, which turned out to be Clay. After Clay was tied up by Mike, he managed to find out what happened when Mike mentioned Bridget's alias name, and convinced him of the truth by showing a picture of himself and Bridget together. They then hatch the plot to multiply it, but he changes the table by killing Clay himself. He says Mike is fascinated to rape her. When she refused, she told him that she knew the truth about Trish, who was transgendered.
This causes Mike to have a rough sex with him while doing rape fantasies. Unbeknownst to Mike, Bridget had dialed 9-1-1 and he persuaded him to confess Clay's murder as part of the role play. Mike was arrested for rape and murder, while he ran away with cash, and calmly destroyed the only evidence that could be used in Mike's defense.
Maps The Last Seduction
Cast
- Linda Fiorentino as Bridget Gregory
- Peter Berg as Mike Swale
- Bill Pullman as Clay Gregory
- Bill Nunn as Harlan
- J. T. Walsh as Frank Griffith
- Dean Norris as Shep
Production
Screenwriter Steve Barancik said the film was originally pitched as a low-budget "skin-e-max" movie for ITC Entertainment even though the filmmakers had "under-radar intentions to make good movies without letting the executives know about me." ITC Entertainment executives were upset with the shooting scene in which Linda Fiorentino dressed like a cheerleader and wore a suspender over her breast. Barancik recalled, "Apparently, a man from a company that monitors things and watches daily, sees a suspender over Linda's nipple, and shouts, 'Are we making an art film?!' He turns off production and calls the actors on the carpet and they all have to promise that they have no artistic pretense, then punish them by not paying them half a day of production and by forbidding the scene to be in the movie, ruining the theme of the role play sexual as a whole. "The scene is cut.
Reception
The Last Seduction received positive reviews from critics and currently holds 94% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes based on 49 reviews. Roger Ebert gave this film four of four stars, highlighting Fiorentino's ability to project his character with dry humor and freedom from the usual Hollywood conventions surrounding an antagonist. He writes at Chicago Sun-Times :
John Dahl's The Last Flirt knows how glad we are to see characters work bravely out of the rules. It gives us a wicked evil woman, and goes away with her. We continue to wait for the movie to lose its courage, and it never happens: This woman is bad from beginning to end, she never reforms, she never compromises, and her movie does not touch any of the conclusions made in which the moral squad comes and tidies it.
Ebert then ranked fifth movie on the 1994 year-end list of his best films.
Awards
Bibliography
- Linda Ruth Williams (2005) Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema , Edinburgh University Press
References
External links
- The Last Flirt on IMDb
- The Last Rayuan at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Last Flirt in AllMovie
- The Last Seduction in Box Office Mojo
- The Last Flirt in Metacritic
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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