Basic Instinct

Paul Verhoeven, my personal vote for Greatest Living Film Director, directed this 1992 blockbuster and in doing so brought to the screen one of the most blistering femme-fatale star-turns of all time. Sharon Stone's Catherine Tramell oozed sexuality and danger and her performance catapulted her to superstardom that endured far beyond the many pitfalls her career would face after this glorious breakthrough.

Verhoeven drew liberally from Hitchcock in crafting the neo-noir but in doing so he added a distinctly 90s flavor in regard to gender politics. I read the film as a vengeful feminist fantasy. The plot of the film, as far as I'm concerned, consists of Sharon Stone striking pose after pose, sizzling, and giving her best come-hither look to a man who can't stay away despite her continuous and explicit warnings that she will kill him. At every turn we see this character distrusted for her sexuality. She is questioned and discoutned on the basis of her sexual proclivities even as she is objectified at every turn.

Stone's character flips the script. She sees the reduction of herself to her body at the hands of the men in her world. She sees their desire. Her response is a brilliant one. She accepts their misogynistic terms but only after amping the sexuality to which she has been reduced up to eleven. She tells them she will be be nothing more than a body to be desired, but should that desire ever be filled it will kill. Poses are dangerous.