Showgirls: The Porno-Cinematic Masterpiece
Blender Dumbass
November 14, 2024👁 41
https://blenderdumbass.org/reviews : 👁 1
Paul Verhoeven is to some extend a legendary film-maker. RoboCop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Hoolow Man. Movies you have probably seen and seen again. Yet it seems like his movie Showgirls perhaps was made with a miscalculation on his part.
The incredible hatred of American people to expressions of utter sexuality in media made Showgirls an easy target for mockery. People perceived it as a rather surface-level soft-pornography, and not a film. And the critics scores of various websites reflect that consensus. Yet I am not one of them. And I think if Verhoeven did the same exact movie, say in Denmark, or some other place in Europe, the film would have received a much greater praise. Just look at Nymphomaniac by Lars Von Trier.
From the very first shot of the film I knew I will be in love with this movie. Having very incredible MaXXXine vibes the film opened up with this pretty nice shot of a mysterious woman ( our main character ) walking with utmost confidence toward a highway to catch a car. Verhoeven is incredible in this film at telling the story through cinematic nuances. Things in the frame. Looks on the faces of the characters. Expressions. Reactions. Everything makes for a truly visceral experience if you let it do it to you. The scene where Nomi tries to eat french fries in the very beginning. From her poring way too much ketchup, to her smashing the whole plate. The direction of Verhoeven is so masterful that you as an audience member gets to feel what she feels.
Despite it is being technically a soft-pornography picture, it is a movie about sexual oppression and the way Hollywood is apparently hiding it. It is as if Verhoeven was trying to start the MeToo movement back in 1995. The main plot is kind of interwoven into various stages of show-business abuse. From a strip-club owner from whom it is unclear whether he jokes or not, when he says to the new girl that he wants blowjobs. To the utter unwillingness of producers and other people in charge to take any action against absolutely undeniable fact that one of their main stars is a violent serial rapist. With one of the scariest plot twits rape scenes ever. Sorry for the spoilers.
Also the film has one of the most pumped up energetic bisexual love triangles. And, oh man, the energy of this film is on the level of something like Damien Chazelle's Babylon. The movie just goes full speed and never takes a break. There were a few cuts to the next scene that were kind of strange, flow-wise. Sometimes the movie just needs to introduce a new thing and it momentarily slows down to do so. So yeah, I'm not claiming that Verhoeven is as good as Chazelle or Spielberg when it comes to flow. But he is damn close.
In a nutshell, the movie feels like a mash between Adrian Lyne's Flashdance, Damien Chazelle's Babylon, Ti West's MaXXXine and Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac, well stirred and served in a colorful presentation straight from Nicolas Winding Refn.
Happy Hacking!!!