La celda de cristal

When adult theaters such as the one profiled in this film were prolific, feminist activists would lead tours of Times Square to bring attention to their cause.

The main character's regular and extensive swimming exercise is a good analogy for the pace of the film. Steady, slow, heavy.

One amusing note, when our heroine follows her mystery man who has just taken a cab, she jumps into another cab, the sax is on the soundtrack, no dialouge, but you can read her lips: "Follow that Cab!"

It's also ironic that she follows him to the Fulton Street Fish Market, which in real life became the focus of an extensive organized crime probe.

Christine (Sandy McCloud) is desperate for employment to the point where she accepts work selling tickets at a porno theatre off of Times Square. As expected some customers give off a creepy aura, though she accepts the invitation of one well heeled, mysterious gent's invite to a game at Yankee Stadium. The porno theatre environment meanwhile begins to have an effect on her, disturbing her boyfriend and spurring her to stalk the mystery man.

Variety is a lurid crock in search of an edge, but it's all location, location, location under neon on 48th street with a cast, crew and script ill prepared to mount a production. Most of the performers sleepwalk through their roles with McCloud's dense and dull lead insipidly gullible, her tailing skills amateurly obvious.

Bette Gordon's direction falters in nearly every department with anemic performances, disjointed storyline, overlong scenes and sloppy camerawork while talking dirty to you. Pounding her misandrist theme home she does offer up some provocative anecdotes from some minor players who look and sound like they've been around the block but with the leaden and lifeless McCloud in the lead Variety becomes an ordeal made to endure. A complete waste of time.

Variety was shot on the super-cheap on the streets of midtown NYC in 1983, which is for a short while part of its not exactly charm but precise and evocative mood. This is a Times Square that most wont recognize since the clean-up in recent years; it's dirty, loaded with porno theaters and video stores, and with some exceptions (like the Variety movie theater boss played by Luis Guzman) there's no lack of sleazy males. In this movie the main character, Christine (Sandy McLeod) seems to be a fairly normal girl just looking for a job and finds one at Jose's Variety theater at the ticket window. Little by little she becomes intrigued by the porno movies playing and by a mysterious gentlemen caller (Richard Davidson) who takes her out on a bum date to Yankee stadium, stranding her up as he just 'goes away' on some urgent matter.

What follows is a series of scenes of her following him around- even going as far as to the Jersey shore where he does some mysterious "business" shaking hands with people outside of amusement parks- and little by little she sinks further into this porno-type of funk, like a misguided femme fatale sitting in her room and playing 45's in sultry clothes and purple lighting. Some of this sounds interesting because it is - Bette Gordon has a point to make here on the feminine condition in an Urban setting, kind of like a Taxi Driver only replacing the guns with more of the porn, and there are some effective scenes early on showing McLeod surrounded by this creepy but intriguing setting.

But there's also passages that, I hate to admit, were just too dull to really be engaged. She follows this man to a fish market, and then we're treated to lots and lots of footage of fish and the like. Why? What does this really add to the atmosphere? It's like Gordon doesn't always know if she wants to make a neo-noir or a documentary, and the shuffle between the two forms (both engaging on their own) becomes confused. I also didn't care for those passages where Christine gives those ridiculously detailed descriptions/synopses of the porno movies she sees to her exasperated boyfriend (Will Patton), and McLeod in these scenes reaches her most annoying points. She's not a terrible actress throughout, but here she sounds like she's reciting remembered lines as opposed to acting, and one sympathizes with what Mark has to put up with. We're putting up with it too.

There is a reason this has something of a very minor cult status, and that it even got Bette Gordon a re-release screening at the Tribeca film festival this year. It's very much a New York movie, made on the dirty streets, meant to capture that dingy side and to give some kind of naturalistic feeling of a strange woman in this environment. But its own mystery undercuts itself. Variety would work far better, maybe even be truly great, as a short film. At 100 minutes, for all of its little moments of pleasure (i.e. when Chrisitne imagines herself up on the screen in a room with the enigmatic criminal Louie) and John Lurie's intoxicating jazz, it's too long and too unfocused for what works well to really strike it home. Luis Guzman steals the show.

The combination of Kathy Acker as writer and Bette Gordon as director should have signaled a potent brew, but sadly what we get here is a brilliant idea cut down savagely by the film's low-budget budget. Tracing the seedy, crime-ridden porn theater world of Times Square in the early 80s from a what was a post-feminist perspective should have pushed the boundaries of what could be explored in feminist cinema but here the effect is to disengage the viewer from the convoluted action. Every technical aspect from the sound to the acting feels shabby and weak and frankly underwhelming but there is an underground post-Factory (Warhol not WalMart) passion at work that just about saves this oddity. Acker's polemical script presents feminist intervention/investment in the patriarchal world of pornography with some gusto and ambiguity at times but eventually the direction dilutes itself in a haze of revisionist sexual politics, thanks to the inconsequential scripting and unfocused lensing.

An intriguing tale on loneliness and obsession, "Variety" takes on human frailties and vulnerabilities and how circumstances can drive these beyond one's control. A young woman in New York City lands a job in a booth as a ticket seller in a pornographic theater. The sights and sounds of the environment pique her interest until a chance meeting with a regular draws her into a spiral of stalking voyeurism.

The backdrop of Reagan-era Manhattan adds an urban aesthetic to this dark tale. Lead actress Sandy McLeod's willowy features add an air of vintage innocence that fit perfectly to the character's role. And boy, did porn actresses look good back then. The natural beauties of yore far outdistance the current crop of tattoo-ridden plastic-injected hermaphrodites from hell that constitute the smut industry nowadays.

This is your classic slow burn flick and it's one that seems to go on forever. While it would have been better if half an hour was taken off to give it more punch the bare, quiet realism conveyed keeps it watchable as if one is the voyeur staring into this young woman's life.

One of those films that isn't anything outstanding but somehow leaves a subtle and undeniable mark, "Variety"'s exploration into the neon alleyways of the big city's throbbing pulse and memorable female protagonist stirs and moves a haunting aftermath that lingers long after the final credits roll in. Quite the see.