**½/**** Image B+ Sound A
starring Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, Sami Frey, Dennis Hopper
screenplay by Ronald Bass
directed by Bob Rafelson
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I suppose there are worse fates than to be made to watch Black Widow. Scripted by '80s stalwart Ronald Bass and directed by fallen '70s wunderkind Bob Rafelson, it's a coldly professional piece of work that combines some clear (if obvious) Hitchcockian doubling with the director's patented sterile master shots. But if much of the mechanics of the thing are put to good, ominous effect, that effect wears off quickly. It's not for lack of potential: pitting a well-put-together ice-queen killer against a falling-apart-at-the-seams female federal agent, its insistence on symmetry between the two solicits a conscious feminist analysis. Alas, the film is so wrapped up in defining itself as a good-time thriller that any subtextual frisson it might have had gets buried, resulting in a not-unpleasant experience that unfortunately doesn't stick.
Black Widow details the cat-and-mouse game played between low-level federal agent Alex Barnes (Debra Winger), whose appearance is unkempt and desexualized, and gold-digging murderess Catherine Petersen (Theresa Russell), who makes herself as coldly sexualized as possible so as to lure rich men first to marriage and then to their deaths. Alex, having chanced on Catherine's M.O. while gathering data on another case, quickly becomes obsessed with stopping her–but nobody with authority believes her, allowing Catherine to stalk and kill yet another hapless victim. That of course doesn't stop Alex from pursuing the killer (she goes so far as to sell all of her possessions to finance the investigation), but the question remains: why is Alex preoccupied with this particular case?
The answer is that she is fascinated by the woman who has everything she hasn't–not just money and power, but also the respect that nobody will give her. The film is loaded with barbs at Alex's less-than-stereotypical self, mostly coming from men, one of whom even suggests that her obsession is the result of being single, a cruel dismissal that would never be levelled at a man. By contrast, Catherine is able to turn her body into capital, which allows her to buy big and sell even bigger, making it imperative that Alex affirm some sense of her non-conformism in the face of a woman playing the game in order to beat it. The film inches ever closer to dealing with the contradictions in female gender roles–a premise a creative writer might have used to cross generic wires and come up with something subversive.
Unfortunately, Ronald Bass is not a subversive man, and he crushes anything untoward under his stereotypical writerly craft. In his hands, the movie is a straight-up-and-down thriller with a femme fatale who must be stopped at all costs–the MacGuffin becomes the movie through Bass's unambiguous approach. Combined with Rafelson's spacious compositions and drab pastels, Black Widow makes for an experience that is mechanically flawless but lacking in soul. Nobody involved can see beyond the surface–that there's more to this story than a relentless push to stop a killer–and their myopia trivializes some potentially explosive material. Though it's workmanlike enough to hold you if you stumble across it on late-night television, it's not meaty enough to justify a rental or a purchase. Assuming the demand was there in the first place.
Black Widow comes to us on DVD from Fox in a double-sided edition containing both 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and 1.33:1 fullscreen presentations. The transfer for each gets the job done and nothing more. While day scenes squeeze what they can from Rafelson's muted '80s palette, there's a slight fuzziness to the image that detracts; night scenes lack detail, and are occasionally beset by the jaggies. At least the Dolby Surround sound is up to scratch: though there's no real action in the subwoofer, the sound is soft without being muddy and defined without being tinny. Also included are two TV spots and the theatrical trailer for Black Widow, plus trailers for "Fox Flix" selections Don't Say a Word, High Crimes, and Joy Ride.
101 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English Dolby Surround, French DD 2.0 (Mono), Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-10; Region One; Fox
