Variety
Synopsis
New York. Desperate for work, Christine takes a job selling tickets at the Variety, a sex cinema. This somewhat alienates her boyfriend Mark, who is investigating a story about union links with the Mob at the wholesale fish market. Christine finds herself drawn towards events on-screen, and also follows one of the customers, Louie, when he enters a sex shop, apparently on business. Louie, who is clearly both wealthy and powerful as a result of his shady activities, takes her to a ball game at Yankee Stadium. When he is suddenly called away, she again follows him and observes him at work.
Variety inverts the traditional narrative structure of cinema – whereby a man watches and a woman is watched – without showing, and thus flaunting, the object of female desire. Creating a counter-narrative to Hollywood, Bette Gordon asks the same question formulated by Teresa de Lauretis in “Oedipus Interruptus”: “How did Medusa feel upon seeing herself in Perseus' mirror just before being slain?”
Official Selection Berlinale 2019 - Forum Archival Constellations
Details
- Year
- 1983
- Type of film
- Features
- Running Time
- 100 mins
- Director
- Bette Gordon
- Producer
- Renée Shafransky
- Editor
- Ila von Hasperg
- Screenwriter
- Kathy Acker (script), Bette Gordon (original story)
- Director of Photography
- Tom Dicillo, John Foster
- Sound
- Helene Kaplan; Sound Design: Ila von Hasperg
- Music
- John Lurie
- Principal Cast
- Sandy McLeod, Will Patton, Luis Guzman, Nan Goldin, Richard Davidson
- Digital restoration
- New York Women in Film and Television's Women's Film Preservation Fund, DuArt Film and Video
- Film Image
- © Bette Gordon, Nan Goldin
Genre
Production status
Complete
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Last updated 5th February 2019
