Female Trouble Blu-ray Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov, June 2, 2018



The caged bird

It is a freak show, plain and simple. I don't think that some of the people that are in it are even acting, they are just trusting their instincts and doing things that they feel are right at a particular moment. And this is probably the only way a project of this nature could work -- you let the freaks be freaks and point the camera at them while they throw fireballs at each other.There is a plot but it is really more of a ruse that provides the mayhem with the necessary structure. Divine plays a spoiled 'teenage girl' named Dawn Davenport that becomes so disappointed by her Christmas present that she violently rejects her parents and then runs away from home. After she is raped by some utterly repulsive idiot, the cuckoo very reluctantly gives birth to a beautiful baby girl. The crazy mother eventually lands a job in a beauty salon where a duo of twisted photographers (David Lochary and Mary Vivian Pierce) convince her that she could become a real star and change her life. However, on the way to the top the future star repeatedly angers another overweight loon (Edith Massey) and eventually she throws acid in her face. The disfigured model recovers in a hospital but after she is given some drugs that are supposed to manage the pain becomes permanently unhinged. Soon after, all hell breaks loose.There is so much craziness in John Waters'that the different parts of its narrative simply fail to come together and produce something meaningful. The end result is a lot like a large collection of improvised episodes that came out of a much larger pile of content that was shot over an unspecified period of time. A lot of these episodes feel totally random and after one gets used to the bizarre instantly become quite dull. (While the basic concept behind it is slightly different, Richard Elfman's Forbidden Zone is another film that operates with similar content and quickly disintegrates in a similar fashion).In recent years there have been multiple attempts to praise the film as a grotesque but very witty condemnation of the safe characterizations and contrasts that Hollywood promoted over the years, but they are profoundly misleading. The simple truth is that the film was conceived to deliver more of the same trash that made Waters popular, and it can be enjoyed only while being viewed as such. In fact, any attempt to sell it as some sort of a misunderstood bizarre satire instantly invalidates the few bits in it that actually manage to be entertaining.Quite predictably, the star of the mayhem is the late Divine whose antics frequently remind of the ones that hardcore drug addicts typically produce after they are denied a fix. A few could be rather amusing to watch, but most of the time it is the type of gross and offensive material that can easily be used in a very effective advertisement that condemns drug use. Massey is in all of the funny scenes that make the film somewhat attractive, so it is more than fair to speculate that the whole thing would have been much more entertaining if Waters had spent a lot more time documenting her madness.All in all, long-time admirers of Waters and his muse Divine will surely find something to like in this film, but folks that are just now learning about the extravagant director and his favorite freaks should first track down and see Multiple Maniacs and his masterpieceas both are far more entertaining shockers.Criterion's upcoming Blu-ray release ofis sourced from a brand new 4K restoration of the film that was supervised by its director.