"Lipstick" focuses on Chris (Margaux Hemingway), a Los Angeles model working for a lipstick company, who ends up being brutalized and raped in her apartment by her little sister's deranged music teacher/avant-garde composer (Chris Sarandon). After a feisty attorney (Anne Bancroft) fails to get a conviction, Chris is later forced to take matters into her own hands.
Decried as one of the worst films of the '70s, "Lipstick" has been condemned as everything from exploitative trash to a shameless vehicle for the Hemingway sisters. I'm going to play the devil's advocate here and say that, while, yes, the film does edge into the territory of the exploitation film (think 1973's "Thriller"), and yes, a lot of the legal jargon is dumbed down and the script set-up is at times completely arbitrary, this is not nearly as terrible a film as many would lead you to believe.
Lamont Johnson, who previously directed the superb Patty Duke thriller "You'll Like My Mother" in 1972, is behind the camera here, and the film is very stylishly shot. 1970s Los Angeles colors every frame, and the camera work is flashy and slick. Pacing is a bit of an issue here, as the film does have a bizarre narrative trajectory-it rises and falls, rises and falls, and the conclusion is a bit abrupt, which is indicative of the script needing some work. Margaux Hemingway and little sister Mariel play on screen siblings very nicely, both demonstrating considerably acting capability. Sarandon is at times a bit overacting here, but is reprehensible enough. Anne Bancroft plays the no- nonsense attorney perfectly, while Perry King appears briefly in a relatively pointless role as Hemingway's boyfriend/photographer.
The film's second-to-last scene is the real dynamite here, and the reason it's remembered above anything else, although it again is a bit awkwardly paced, and seems to arrive too late to the party. Overall though, "Lipstick" is not as awful of a film as so many have painted it to be. It's no masterpiece, but it is a mildly thrilling, entertaining revenge film, and Margaux Hemingway and Bancroft's performances lend it some serious backbone. 7/10.
