Crimes Of Passion
Two parallel stories converge in this bizarre tale of sexual politics in contemporary America.
Kathleen Turner plays a prostitute called China Blue, who wears a slinky blue velour dress, and a platinum blonde wig, and walks the streets at night in search of clientele. Curiously, during the day, she is Joanna Crane: a professional woman, a workaholic, in fact. She lives in a modern apartment, and despite her obvious monetary and career success, persists with her sordid double life.
Why?
It seems that by fulfilling her clients' fantasies, she is engaging in some sort of power play with them, by seeing them at their most vulnerable. She knows, deep down that their having to pay for sex makes them pathetic. What has happened to make her that way? Previous painful experiences? The desire to assert her right to be a sexual being?
Meanwhile, we meet Bobby: a private eye, with a lagging sex life. He is recruited by the boss at the company where Turner's character works, to find out more about her private life. Her boss is suspicious of her because of her hardened attitude towards men, and her workaholic ways.
In a weird coup d'etat, Anthony Perkins plays perhaps his creepiest character: an amyl-sniffing, erotic-dancer-watching, self-styled reverend, who makes it his duty to "save" China Blue. Is he morally righteous, or fearful of women? Given Perkins' past and prior roles, it makes his performance in this film especially repulsive.
The mood of the film is clinched by Rik Wakeman's synthesised adaptation of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony - The New World. Although, judging by a music video interlude early in the film, Ken Russell didn't think much of the new world on offer in the United States.
Although there are themes of sexual politics and the price of sexual repression to be found in this film, it's hard to know if discerning these themes is the result of reading rather too much into the story. There are disturbing misogynistic elements at play as well. Is that a reflection of society, or of Ken Russell?