She's baaack!

Catherine Tramell returns to the screen, and fourteen years after our first shocking encounter with the notorious film anti-heroine, another dead body turns up in suspiciously close proximity.

In the opening sequence to 'Basic Instinct 2', Catherine is racing through the roadways of night time London at a hundred miles - er, correction, a hundred * and-twenty * miles per hour while engaging in risky business in such circumstances: 'self-pleasure' with the help of the football star seated next to her. Soon the speeding little sports car crashes through a large glass pane and plunges into the cold, dark waters of the Thames below. Catherine saves herself while her companion goes down with the car, and it's Detective Roy Washburn's job to find out if Catherine is responsible for the footballer's death.

During police questioning, Catherine's cold, cynical reaction shows no trace of the expected shock, sadness or guilt at what has just transpired. Scotland Yard promptly sends her to Dr. Michael Glass for a psychiatric evaluation. However, when the good doctor attempts to take charge of the situation, he proves to be no match for the aggressive seduction quickly put into play by Catherine. The evaluation over, Dr Glass soon appears in court to give his testimony. His official opinion? Catherine Tramell is 'addicted to risk'. Without firm evidence nailing her for the watery death of Mr Football, Washburn lets her off the hook and she goes on her merry way.

Then Catherine returns to Michael with a tale about pondering his verdict; she's decided she'd like some help with her 'addiction'. He accepts her as a private patient - wholly against his better judgment and usual practice. (But there would be no story if he didn't, would there?)

Well, Michael has just divorced his wife, who is now seeing journalist Adam Towers. Towers may or may not have played a part in Michael's earlier breakdown relating to a previous murder implicating one of his patients. Further roiling the waters is Catherine's later involvement with journalist Adam Towers, too…and…well, do you really want to know more? Because from hereon the plot adds one more preposterous development after another as the movie tries to propel the story forward.

The point is that doubts enter Michael's mind as to whether or not Catherine is telling the truth about anything (including details alarmingly relevant to him), or whether Detective Washburn was or wasn't trying to frame the remorseless Catherine for the footballer's death. When two more people - one close to Michael - suddenly end up dead, too, who is it who did them in? The plot zigs and zags like a drunken sailor - nonsensically - although it gets momentarily bogged down by a flabby midsection. Nonetheless the little twists still manage to screw with your mind, keeping you guessing pretty much until the end. This part I do admit was a bit of fun, even if it was all a wholly superficial pleasure.

The subtext. And supertext?

However, the subtext of the film also nagged at me throughout: Catherine's a successful author who writes about the basic instincts (love, sex, violence). She's a strong, independent woman, yes - but she's also narcissistic, devious, manipulative, sexual in unseemly and aggressive fashion and perhaps, even murderous. I couldn't help thinking that Catherine Tramell was the latest subliminal put-down of the idea of a powerful female (by weak-willed males personified by Dr Glass?). It's a critique that harks back to that evil First Female, Eve, whose exclusive fault it was that good, sweet, innocent Adam finally partook of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. (So, is wanting more knowledge a satanic desire, then? But I digress.)

Much has also been made of Sharon Stone's decision to play the vampy seductress once again - * at her age! * - oh, my! Well, yeah, I say that she's certainly free to flaunt it if she's got it. At 47, Ms Stone looks a whole lot trimmer, sexier and more poised than many women ten, twenty years her junior (with possibly some help from Botox injections and a surgeon's scalpel? If so, it's just par for the Hollywood course, dearies). That this issue continues to shock and amaze audiences, gossips and some so-called critics in the 21st century USA speaks to the culture's discomfort with the thought of any actress over 40 actually having sex. And liking it. (Au contraire, in that so-called 'cheese-eating monkeyland' called France [as some US rightwing France-bashers called it], Isabelle Huppert, Nathalie Baye and Catherine Deneuve [aged 53, 57 and 62, respectively] are still going strong as potent sexual beings on the big screen - yes, sometimes perversely so - with nary a raised eyebrow for miles.) Time to get over it, guys - who usually seem more disturbed by this.

Alas, there are many other bad things in it besides the tepid script.

As beleaguered and bewildered psychoanalyst Michael Glass, David Morrissey is as boringly average as they come. As expected, he turns quickly to silly putty in Catherine's hot hands. Mr Morrissey does an okay job, but his anger and frustration lack sufficient edge and depth for us to vicariously experience and sympathize with his mental torment. In short, where's that dishy, hunky, superb Clive Owen when you need him?!

Playing Michael's psychoanalyst friend, Milena Gardosh, Charlotte Rampling was distracting, for reasons that are not good. Unlike most roles she's had of late, she is given to more smiles here; problem is, the smiles feel inauthentic, and fail to light up those depressingly hooded eyes. Ms Rampling plays another weakly drawn character on whom Catherine, for whatever reason, seems to be making the moves. Yet all we get from that potential (and predictable) liaison is innuendo, as the film remains shy about their evolving relationship.

Another annoyance came by way of that thick, gray, bird's nest sitting atop the head of the formulaic (I think he was Austrian à la Freud, but I wasn't sure), wild-haired character - yet another psychoanalyst - named Dr Jakob Gerst (Heathcote Williams). When he was on-screen, my mind kept wandering, and wondering if at some point a blue egg would appear on his puffy mane and suddenly crack open to reveal a chirping baby bird. His role in the film? He's another friend of Michael's and Milena's, and - whaddaya know? - serves simply as just another convenient plot device.

(Incidentally, speaking of 'dos, Catherine's choppy haircut might be unique, but it's not much better than Gerst's. I seriously doubt that the style will catch on with many women viewers.)

The sole saving grace…or two.

Sharon Stone's near-campy turn as the predatory Catherine is the major thing going for 'Basic Instinct 2'. The script and the poorly written part of Catherine might fail her much of the time, but it's Ms Stone's smooth and unblinking, laser-like delivery of every line, no matter how lame and tame, that elevates the film to watchable status. While I chuckled and laughed at Catherine's wicked game of relentlessly taunting the proper and repressed Dr Glass, frankly, I wasn't sure if the humourous angle was truly intentional.

At any rate, you have to give credit to Ms Stone for going for the kill, so to speak - taking on the role with wanton, devil-may-care abandon. At times slightly over-the-top, her sinister and mocking pose perhaps tries to compensate for the feeble script, but it was still perverse fun to see what latest twisted joke was on tap to push the increasingly confused, poor Dr Glass into a tailspin. It's a refreshingly open performance, and together with the suggestively sleazy, slimy bit by David Thewlis as Detective Roy Washburn, gives the spark of life and excitement to this dampened-down, allegedly erotic thriller.

Finally, neither erotic nor thrilling enough to really count.

Crippled by a shaky script and sketchy characters, the film finally fails to go the distance and deliver the goods - those requisite thrills and chills, erotic or not. It becomes a merely spoofy exercise, just like that wacky Adam West version of Batman on TV, but with more sex, blood and violence - but it still isn't enough.

For all of Ms Stone's admirable boldness in upping the ante in the steamy sex scenes (many of which lack an 'it' factor; lots of footage were left on the cutting room floor - but there are sites apparently making them available on the Internet), the final decision to tone it down was simply moronic. In aiming for wider audience exposure via an R-rating in the USA (which is the cut audiences on this side of the pond will see), the film's coyness in its treatment of the central element of sex becomes a timid and ultimately ridiculous move, defeating its raison d'être, sacrificed at the altar of commercial and puritanical interests - especially if one were to imagine the infinitely more fascinating, gripping, envelope-pushing limits that someone like David Cronenberg would have taken it. Alas, poor Sharon. 'Twas (almost) all for naught?

NOTE:

Recommended for Sharon Stone fans, and the curious with change to spare.

For those who've seen the film on that side of the Atlantic, I'd like to know if the European cut fares any better than the US one. Do post your review!