Female trouble

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Movie
Original title Female trouble
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1974
length 97 minutes
Rod
Director John Waters
script John Waters
production John Waters
camera John Waters
cut John Waters
occupation

Female Trouble is an American feature film directed by John Waters in 1974 .

action

The USA in 1960: Dawn Davenport, a self-centered youth, is constantly at odds with parents and teachers. For Christmas she wants so-called “cha-cha-heels” - shoes with particularly high heels. Since her bourgeois parents consider them indecent, only slippers wait for Dawn under the Christmas tree. Thereupon, furious, she pushes her mother into the Christmas tree, curses her father and escapes from the house. Forced to hitchhike, Dawn is raped by the handyman Earl (who, like Dawn, is also played by Divine) while driving. When she becomes pregnant, she calls Earl and tries to blackmail him, who only says that she should go away. As a single mother, Dawn kept her head above water in the following years with jobs in a hamburger restaurant and as a stripper. She occasionally steals with her old high school friends, Chiclette and Concetta.

Dawn's life changes when she one day walks into the Lipstick Beauty Salon . The local hairdresser Gater Nelson eventually becomes her husband. After a few years, the 1970s dawned and Dawn's daughter Taffy is now a teenager, but her marriage to Gater falls apart. The beauty salon owners, the insane Dasher couple, are obsessed with the belief that beauty and crime are intrinsically linked. Suddenly they find their ideal image in Dawn and try to turn her into a star. Dawn uses her newfound position of power in the beauty salon and lets Gater fire there, who then moves away to Chicago with a broken heart. Ida Nelson, Gater's lesbian aunt, then uses acid to disfigure Dawn's face - but the disfigurement only makes her more beautiful in the Dasher's eyes. Aunt Ida is locked in a cage by the Dashers, where she is later tormented by Dawn at will and has one arm cut off.

Meanwhile, Taffy has more and more arguments with her loveless and criminal mother. She makes contact with her father Earl, who takes her on in a less paternal way and wants to rape her while drunk, whereupon Taffy stabs him to death in self-defense. Meanwhile, Dawn, meanwhile transformed into an exotic look by the Dashers, plans her first stage show, which is to make her a star. Before the show, Taffy, who has since converted to the Hare Krishna sect and has secretly released Aunt Ida from her cage, appears and calls on her mother to convert. Dawn strangles her daughter to death in front of the enthusiastic eyes of the Dashers and their friends. In the stage show that follows, she asks who wants to die for celebrity and shoots a pistol at random at the audience.

Dawn is arrested and tried for murder. The Dashers have legal immunity promised for their incriminating statements as key witnesses, while they give Aunt Ida bribes so that she can also keep her mouth shut. While Dawn's attorney pleads for an acquittal for insanity, the jury eventually sentenced her to death in the electric chair . In prison, Dawn begins a relationship with prisoner Ernestine, who is seriously concerned about her - but Dawn only reminds her that after her death, Ernestine can give books and interviews about her relationship with her, the famous criminal. Dawn thanks her fans before she puts on her last big show with her death in the electric chair.

background

Female Trouble was shot on a budget of around $ 25,000, with many of the cast and crew having worked with Waters on past film projects such as Mutiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingos .

Reviews

Female Trouble is set by many film critics as a magnum opus by John Waters, he himself said that in his opinion it was his best early work. The Variety wrote in 1974 that the film was a "true original". Waters got the maximum out of the low budget and cinematically, Female Trouble in sets, exposure, camera work, editing and sound is superior to the previous film Pink Flamingos . Film critic Rex Reed wrote: “Where do these people come from? Where do they go when the sun goes down? Is there no law or something? " Waters printed this sentence from Reed's review on posters for the film.

Film & Wahnsinn wrote about the film: “Shrill anarcho-satire by enfant terrible John Waters! As his previous films were shot at an absolute no budget level, the director never misses an opportunity to break taboos: the obsession with slimness and beauty gets its fat out here as well as the American way of life ”. The film service noted: "Regardless of social taboos, a deliberately tasteless, loud and cynical underground satire on the fetishes of youth, beauty and slimness."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ed Halter: Female Trouble: Spare Me Your Morals. Retrieved December 4, 2018 .
  2. ^ Ed Halter: Female Trouble: Spare Me Your Morals. Retrieved December 4, 2018 .
  3. ↑ variety.com
  4. ↑ John Waters on the DVD for Female Trouble, 2004.
  5. ↑ film database
  6. ^ Female Trouble. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used