Revisiting Basic Instinct

I was 16 years old when I first saw Basic Instinct. A friend of ours, Desiré, offered to throw a birthday party for my brother at her home; we rented the movie and watched it after her mother served us fondue. We were all between the ages of 14 and 16, so we must have blanked out all the golden era film references in favour of the soft porn scenes. Later, when my family moved to Singapore, my brother bought a copy of the film on VHS, and I remember watching it a few more times before a maid knicked the video (together with all of my mother's jewels and my VHS copy of Disney's Peter Pan).

Last year, I heard that the controversial academic Camille Paglia called it her favourite film and had even included an audio commentary to the 10th Year anniversary edition of the DVD. So, when I saw the film for sale at Fopp for only £5, I couldn't resist. Last night, after a tiring session at the gym, I plopped in the DVD and settled down with a glass of red wine.

The film has aged amazingly well. Watching it as a 31 year old is a completely different experience; I immediatly spotted the references to Vertigo, Rear Window and Dressed to Kill (the soundtrack, from the start, harks back to Hitchcock's greatest films); and I could appreciate a lot more the sexual banter between the characters and the "gender politics" played out through the gay-angle of the story (which unimpressed a lot of queer critics at the time.) It has an interesting mixture of classiness with exploitation and cheese, and it's probably the only decent movie Sharon Stone ever made.

I imagine Camille Paglia's commentary will be mostly about Sharon Stone's character being the ultimate feminist; the drive to death which propels all the relationships in the film; the subversion of the ideal nuclear family; and so forth. I'm hoping her commentary will be just as entertaining as Slavoj Zizek's in The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (where he sadly never mentions Basic Instinct)

In today's Independent, I spotted an excerpt from Joe Eszterhas' (the film's screenplay writer) upcoming book on Hollywood: full article.

Panic and Gales

Deep underground, at Bank tube station, a busker strummed her guitar and sang The Smiths' Panic: "Panic on the streets of London/Panic on the streets of Birmingham/And I wonder to myself/Whether I'll ever be sane again..." Stupidly, I didn't stop to listen to what was a beautiful folky version of the song.

Her choice must have been based on the gales hitting the country.