sandover
There are very few films of sublime bad taste."Female Trouble" transcends even that.The moment Divine asks "Who wants to die for Art?", and after somebody from the audience stands up, says yes, and Divine starts shooting, something really unnerving happens: we pass from fierce satire - and as satire goes, the confines of the social - to the realm of the unconditional. We are not back into Breton's old surrealist adage "a surreal act is to get out and start shooting people", with its haughty, bourgeois accent, but in a new territory that challenges even that! I still cannot fathom this shifting of gears which exposes our pretensions, if not our infection; John Waters is accustomed in making categories collapse, and oppositions fall into each other, but this is unprecedented and followed by an assault that ends up in picturing Divine as a preposterous conversion of Dreyer's "Joan of Arc"! I would put this gem in the rare American tradition which starts with Gertrude Stein's Ida, a bizarre writing about the modernistic sainthood of fame and its vicissitudes. John Waters and his Divine saint make that miracle happen again: a sublime collusion between fame and shame, saint and quaint, and somehow a cry for affection.
Tromafreak
Meet Dawn Davenport. Dawn is your typical, ungrateful, outlandish, hog of a teenager. Dawn hates her teachers, and her parents, and she wants what she wants, when she wants it, and on this day, Dawn has her little heart set on a pair of cha-cha heels. Considering today is Christmas, there will be hell to pay if her loving parents let her down. With Christmas now ruined, a disappointed Dawn curses her parents, destroys all the presents, and immediately runs away from home, with tears in her eyes. In a scene, that has to be seen to be believed, this outlandish hog runs through the neighborhood in a blind rage, eventually meeting up with a familiar stranger. Lust takes over, the new love birds find the nearest mattress, and trash-cinema history is made. With Dawn now pregnant, the familiar stranger wants nothing more to do with her, so like any strong woman in her position, she gives birth, to little Taffy, biting through the umbilical cord, and everything. Now, with two mouths to feed, Dawn takes on just about any job available, robbing houses, go-go dancing, hell, even waitressing. The pressures of motherhood are driving Dawn crazy, this kid actually expects poor Dawn to send her to school, and to feed her, kids can be so ungrateful. Luckily, Dawn gets a job (or something similar) at the Lipstick beauty salon, owned by Donald and Donna Dasher, an exclusive salon for exclusive beauties, and these two want Dawn as there customer (or mascot?). Anyway, Dawn ends up married to a guy named Gator, who works at the salon, and looks an awfully lot like Crackers from Pink Flamingos, but isn't. By this time, Taffy is old enough to be played by Mink Stole (in her best role), and between Gator trying to get into her pants, and just being a lousy husband all together, Dawn is fed up, and divorces him, and has him fired from the salon. With Dawn now divorced, and seemingly, on the verge of murdering her ungrateful daughter, the Dashers feel it's now time to move forward with Operation excitement. Drive poor Dawn insane, get her hooked on heroin, and brainwash her into believing that crime is beauty, and that crime is art. All of this is seemingly put on the shelf after Gators outlandish, aunt Ida throws acid (not the good kind) in Dawns face, scaring her, driving her further into insane. Once out of the hospital, Dawn kidnaps Ida, and cuts her paw off, and finally driven over the edge after Taffy joins the hare Krishna's, so, now seems like a reasonable time to end her ungrateful, little life, so she does, and then kills a few more, during her big debut as a star. With Dawn now on the run, and eventually caught, the Dashers, along with Aunt Ida, of course, testify against her, in court. Poor Dawn was found guilty, and is now dead from the electric chair, but on the up side, Dawn was convinced, that in her line of work, "the chair" was like an academy award. Dawn knew what she was doing, no moral needed for this mean-spirited story, Dawn won. So, who cares if we fail? Well, probably no one, but they might, if we kill people.After Pink Flamingos, John Waters probably felt that his next project would have a lot to live up to, so, making an impact would be the only option, and, an impact is what he made. Not to say, Female Trouble takes things further, you understand, but, it somehow, manages to be funnier than Pink Flamingos,. In fact, Female trouble is Waters' all-time, funniest film,, not to mention, the most mean-spirited, and my personal favorite. Although. Pink Flamingos is. of course, the masterpiece, this one will keep you interested for as long as it wants. I'd give just about anything for Waters to make just one more like this. These days, Lloyd Kaufman is our only hope for true, independent trash. But once upon a time, Waters was king, and Dreamland reigned supreme. Recommended to mainstream haters with a rebellious sense of humor. 10/10
