Review of The Last Seduction (1994) by Terry M — 24 Nov 2006

Femme's Fatale feature quite heavily in my top 100 films list and this film features, for me, the very best of them. If Barbra Stanwyck's Phyllis Deitrichson (in Double Indemnity) was the screen's greatest femm fatale for almost 50 years then Linda Fiorentino's Bridget Gregory is a worthy successor to her.

The plot is convoluted, intricate and should reveal itself to an audience as they watch it so I'll provide only the setup. Bridget Gregory and her Doctor Husband (Pullman) pull of a drug deal and she runs off with all the proceeds while he's in the shower. She moves, gets a new place, a new 'designated fuck' (Berg). However she can't just wait around for the years it might take to get a divorce before she starts spending.

The Last Seduction might just have ended up as another DTV quality 'thriller', the kind with precious few thrills; the title and the ad campaign certainly make it look like that. However there's quality here in every department.

Most notable is Linda Fiorentino. It's a crying shame that The Last Seduction was first shown in the US on cable TV as this fact meant Fiorentino was ineligible for an Oscar Nomination. Whether she'd have got it is debateable but she certainly deserved on and, in a weak field in 1994, deserved the win too. Awards or no awards Fiorentino is brilliant. Her Bridget is a layered and complex character and she embodies all the aspects of her perfectly. There's always something going on beneath the surface with this performance, which allows you to buy into the massive intelligence the character has to pull off her plan. There's also a malevolence about her but wirter/director Dahl and Fiorentino are both smart enough never to make her unlikeable. Scared though you are of her, dangerous as she is, you're always attracted to Birdget.

That's also true of Peter Berg's character; Mike. Berg is great as the not too smart small town guy who gets his world turned upside down by Bridget, it's a shame he hasn't continued acting, instead concentrating od directing.

Bill Pullman hams it up as Bridget's husband and gets a lot of the laughs in the film.

That's it for the main cast, it's almost a 3-hander, but it's worth mentioning JT Walsh's excellent cameo as Bridget's Lawyer which contributes the single best line in the movie.

The Last Seduction is free to be more explicitly violent, more sexual and use more explicit language but it uses these things well and in service of its riveting plot.

The brilliant open ending led to a sequel which involved none of the original team and is by all accounts a film to give a wide berth.

If you love the classic noir and want to see the themes of those films brought in to the present day then The Last Seduction is as good a film as you'll ever get.