i aa CMU aati ata TT Bowne Baan aa BASEBALL BOOKS Cees ay Sanday Py, cor NaS ustaWITH A STYLISH EYE FOR BLOOD AND BULLETS, DIRECTOR KATHRYN BIGELOW BASHES GOP-MOVIE CONVENTIONS IN BLUE STEEL Ir You WERE analien trying ‘oparse American culture from the movies, you could be forgiv en for figuring most people were either cops, criminal, victims, or innocent bystanders. Ira won derthe French havea word just for cop movies—they call them policers—and we don’, but no ‘matter. American sereenwriters efinicely have the form down ‘Pat—to0 par, in face. Witness che herd of mismatched -cops-who- hate-each-other-on-sight-then curn-out-to-be-best-friends stampeding the screen. And cestarted making movies in whieh one of those ‘buddy cops is from outer space. ‘you know the limits of tha idea have been pushed. Blue Se, digeeted by Kathryn Bigelow and staring Jamie Lee Curtisand Ron Silver, could be justanother one of those mind: less boys-in-blue movies. In stead, Bigelow grabs a fiscul of predictable fil tions, urns them inside out and Upside down, chen slams them. fogether, filtering the result through her hard-edged lens: the result is both relentlessly stylish and thematically ambitious. Make no mistake, Bie Stee bites off mouthful, almost more than fcean get down. [es chock-full ideas: abouta woman gaining power anda man losing about the insanity of mur it about the city as jung eras religious epiphany, about madness and convention, orderand ‘chaos. Infact, Bigelow may have made one of those ary eheillers that border on having coo much style for their own good. And tha’ fine with her. Easygoing, no-brain entertainment isn't ‘exactly whar she has in mind, "You need to deliver on the level of cence Bigelow says. “A ment while maintaining an integrity.” movie can give you an insight, share an observation Is noc just some BY MAITLAND McDONAGH thing to eat popcorn by No problem there. Bue Sie is definicely not going tobe con fused with last week's buddy. cop picture. And that’s nor only because the copisa she and the wannabe buddy isa yuppie psy cho killer. “Tewas important to me that [police officer] Megan Tumer have an androgyns.” says Bigelow everyman, not a Dirty Harty who comes equipped with agun and shoots For Blue Stes female offic, Bigelow cumed to Jamie Lee Cue tis, who synthesizes all he roles “that she really be an. she has exerplayed—from gungly bucresourefl babysitter in Hal Josseen to aerobicized icon in Perfet and dupliccous sexpox in A Fish Called Wanda —ino a loner whose quick draw hides emo- ‘ional JelLO. When Turner's de ‘mon lover tells her she the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, your heart aches for how badly she wants to believe him There won't be similar stir- rings for Ron Silver as the creepy commodities trader who doesn’t want to kill hes, but kill for her, and with her. The designer-suited, verbal acrobat sinks into psychosis the moment he meets Turmer—under somewhat stressful ‘ireumstances—and realizes that happiness really isa warm g The gun is the symbolic engine of the whole movie,” Bigelow ob- serves “Ie emblematic of authority death, power, the poine at which ‘so lives connect. I's the heartbeat. Ica different heartbeat than you'l find in most conventional movie thrillers, however, Bigelow is charting some feral territory here We've all heard the one about how every cop isa criminal and all the sinners saints. Only Blu Stelis about lawman who finds a killer and gets an ugly look at his own hidden desires, I's about what & Poses“THE GUN IS...THE POINT WHERE TWO. LIVES CONNECT. IT’S THE HEARTBEAT.” happens when a model eigen with a time bomb in his bmi looks deep into Turner's eyes and glimpses a seerer darkness there, a darkness that unleashes the killer inside his own soul What follows are creepy mind games, heavy firepower, a few very bloody bits, an inted minable chase scene, and @ somewhat satisfactory solu tion—all the standard elements of any cop movie. Bur whatever critics and audiences ultimately say about Blue Stee, standard probably won't be part of the vocabulary ‘You're always looking for the curve tha wll lift yo out of reality and out of the con- ventions of other movies,” Bi hings that work best are the things that ae right infront of us—the familie fom arwisted a be far more disturbing than the low observes. “The POEM CRE RMR Bigclow,38,isno stranger ERR LRM | king expectations and rumning Peet TCROMMCe rare chem .round, on-screen and of She's a willowy beauty with a kick-ass sensibility tha belies her fine arts background, a well-spde ken smare woman fluent in the feverish language of exploitaign movies. Its clear that she has a way with cinema's clichés, though, she prefers to cll ie “using genre, common language, but refrac the conventions through a different prism.” ‘So, she shoots bullets but talks film-school babble. When Bigelow refers to film asa “pure, innocent” medium, she’s not speakingthe suage of the Moral Majority. She's alking about a direetnessof effect so keen, so untadulterated in the telling, cha itcuts like a kif With only chree films to her credit, she has established herself asa major visualst with a mean edge Bigelow started slamming gentesin The Loveless (1981), written and directed by Bigelow and Money Montgomery, in which a gang bikers blows intoa sleepy Souther burg en route co the motote cycle races in Daytona. There's an explosion of violence, of course, bucit' not the bikers rebelling against whatever you have. Ie the gentec! townspeople, uming loose every ugly impulse they ever hid undera brite veneer of respectability who unleash the red tid. And oh, that look. White, white skin and black, black leather, caste ‘mere and steel, neon and the eathartic Southern sun Lwyas interested in an iconography of power built Om instant ra ame f° ENTERTAPNMENT WEEKLYRo uggl “FRENCH CRITICS WANTED TO KNOW WHAT ALL THAT BLOOD MEANT,” BIGELOW gratification,” Bigelow says, ckingan American archetype, keying ofits power, and workingit against very suspended narrative.” Translation: a thinking man’s biker movie, The Wild One by way of Ale bere Camus’ The Stranger. Some people think her next effort, sar Darie(1987), is the best vampire er made, Hyperbole aside, it defini mired ina tar pit of fang, stake, cape, and bat clichés. A vampire-Western-road movie with an existential erotic spin, Near Darbis about what happens when country bay meets out-of-town girl, who really isn’ like anyone he’s ever metbe- fore. .not one bit, in fact. “I wanted t0 juxtapose the Western loner and the vampire, mythological figures who defy the system, who work outside the sys- tem,” Bigelow says, “There's something very romantic about the West and about the blood-drinking, so combining them was very exciting.” [Loners, romance, and drinking blood aside, Bigelow's perception of the erotic ‘component of vampirism i nothing new Buchertake here is pure pulp ofthe best possible kind: vital and direct, swoony and submissive, desperate, wild, beauti- ful, and damnedall atonce. For the bet paircof 45 minuces, Naar Dark mean- ders sumpruously from mannered pillar to post, then just when everyone's all cozy and along forthe ride, the ral fun stars ‘The vampires, kind of supernacucal Hole-in-the-Wall Gangby ‘way of the Manson family, drop by a redneck roadhouse and raise some eal hell Fainthearted flk usually bail athe unforgetable action that takes place therefor some tastes’ justto0 much ghoulish good humor and warped bonhomie amid the slater. “In Paris, the French critics wanted to know what all that blood meant to me,” Bigelow says. “They were sure it had something ro do with my beinga wom= an, kept telling them I didn't make the rules: Vampires drink blood, that’s just che way they are, Bur they wouldn't stop trying to read ‘mote into it.” Could itbe that movie blood jus looks so great when ‘you splash icon che walls? Bigelow’s addiction to style started back in art school, where she. trained as.a painter. She picked upa movie camera for a mixed-me- dia project and discovered a new world of intensely potencimages suffused with a childlike, chough hardly childish, sense of noveley Her first short film, The Set-Up, feavured—what else—two men ‘of French semiotician y revtalizes material long since beating cach other senseless to the sout Sylvere Lotringer’s voice naddition © her formal caning at Columbia University’smaster > MARCH 16, 1990 Precrueennad Seu Penner tcc mre ea SAYS. “THEY WERE SURE IT HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH MY BEING A WOMAN.” ‘of fine ars film program, Bigelow’s ec- centic frame of reference may be the key toher aesthetic. Once she discov- xed movies, Bigelow plunged in head- Jong, absorbing everything from New German Cinema to film noir, Soviet formalism to spaghetti Westerns raking crash course in ouiaw aesthetics. She cites along list of directors whose work she admires—from Sergio Leone and Rainer Wemer Fassbinder wo Wale Hil, Oliver Stone, and Jim Cameron, “allin- credible sys. al the architec of thet own creations,” she says. She's not just taking in che abstract about the lst thre. “Macho guys Hilland Stone dominate the seeen with solid, brass-ballimagery seeets of fire, men ofa, vers of blood, you name it. You'd think theirs would be 4 no-giels-allowed club, but Hill was so taken with Te Laces that he offer (0 produce her next ulimately unrealized) project, a thriller about gang wars. That sev, Spanish Harlem, ern atuacted Stone's attention; he wanted to cowrite another picture with her, but Sakuador and Platoon intervened and he wound up coproducing Blu Stenstead. Head ration for Cameron, whose Te Termina- Iorand Alen set new standard for slek, smar action-adventure, extends beyond the screen: They were marie lst yer. Bigelow may rollout the heavy artillery in her movies, but she’s abit gun-shy aboue discussing her next film. Tha’ probably because Blue Star's telease was delayed due to business problems suffered by the film’ original fnancers. MGM/UA subsequently picked it up and is now distibutinge widely, beginning this wee 1c posible, however, tha she may direct News Rase Hot, adapted from the short try by eyberpunk dreamer Wiliam Gibson, A twisted romantic haunted by dystopian visions, Gibson bortows the language of science ition and crafts doomed love stores with high-tech tap- pings. es no wonder this fellow genre-smasher caught her eye Naw Rose Hotels “a celebration of niilism a form of high a, day-to-day reality warped ino seductive nightmare,” says Bigelow Gibsons dark, ecstatic passions are certainly a match Bigelow pragmaccally points oucthat you never ean be certain any- thing'sa go unci you're on the set. oi this particular project falls dough, there are plenty of other realtySeductive nightmare themes tg around, One thingseems certain: Don'e look for a lighthearted romance to eat popcorn by. “Film canbe the loophole inthe fabric of person’ life,” she ays “te place where they can live out fantasies, ive out eas, and walk. away unarmed.” = her own, but ores wove sa Hes NER ey 8