Female Perversions

The guy who voices Mr. Krabs on Spongebob Sqaurepants erotically shaves Tilda Swinton’s pubic hair. That is the only thing of interest to happen in Female Perversions.

The best way to sum up the plot of Female Perversions is with this Fox News headline that went semi-viral a while back:

That’s it. That’s the movie. Tilda Swinton is too successful and doesn’t feel love. Despite her having a lot of sex with people of multiple genders, she has little to no emotions.

Primarily, Female Perversions focuses on sex. But for a movie called Female Perversions, it’s not very perverse. Even by 1996 standards, the sex depicted here isn’t shocking or overly unusual. Sex is where the movie lays its focus so that’s a problem. It’s not a particularly sexy film either. The sex scenes are just sort of meh, neither shocking nor titillating. They’re boring more than anything. The most noteworthy sex scene for me personally was a lesbian sex scene that took place in a hammock. That’s not overly kinky or perverse; I was just distracted by the unnecessarily high level of difficulty a hammock would provide to a sexual encounter.

All of the major characters in this film are women however Female Perversions has no interest in having any of them be realistic portrayals of women. I initially figured this was because Female Perversions is just another movie written by men who seem to have never met a human woman. To my surprise, women wrote and directed Female Perversions. Consequently, I think there must be some level of satire to the proceedings. That doesn’t make the film better though, it just means Female Perversions failed on another front. It’s not clever, funny nor over the top enough to be clearly identifiable as a satire.

The worst part about this movie is Tilda Swinton. I adore Tilda Swinton but my god, she is miscast in this role. Her character needed to be a sort of all-American, modern female sex symbol. However, Swinton looks like a thousand year-old, androgynous alien. Much as the camera loves her face, she doesn’t exude the right type of sex appeal for this role. There’s this underlying artsy, weirdness that Swinton brings to the role. That quality that makes her a great actress in most of her roles does not gel with the character she is supposed to be playing. Frankly, she’s too interesting for this movie and this character.

I’m pretty sure Female Perversions thinks it’s smart. It thinks it’s saying something and making a point. It is not. It’s neither smart nor sexy nor memorable. The story is non-existent, the overly focused sex aspect is not shocking or interesting and their lead character is staggeringly miscast. Female Perversions is, overall, not a successful movie.

Overall rating: 4.7/10

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