Jaded

Caryn Krooth is an interesting director. But I think she was confused whether to make a sleazy lesbian thriller or a film that about the limitations of rape laws or a police procedural. Carla Gugino is great eye candy. So are the other females including the rather corpulent investigator (Aida Turturro) who always wears low cut dresses. The threesome lesbian skinny dipping that leads to rape is very well shot. Rya Kihlstedtthere is excellent as the vicious lesbian. She really pulled off the role well with the great introduction scene at the bar. Catherine Dent was pretty and I could sense a hint of sexual tension between her and Turturro. But the sexual tension was not well developed. There are certain arty farty student aspects to the film. But overall, i liked it. It does not really work as a mystery/police procedural. But it is a nice little unique film with a great Carla Gugino, set in a sleepy beach town.

(7.5/10)

"Jaded" should not be considered as en erotic thriller because the sex scenes are not for viewing pleasure unlike movies like "Indecent Behavior" or "Friend Of The Family".

"Jaded" is not an easy watch as it's story is difficult to conceive and it's not that common in society. From the beginning of the movie, with the first scene, you expect more strong scenes.

The raping scene wasn't (in my opinion) a well created scene. I think that the director didn't use proper camera techniques overall in the movie. That's why it looks sometimes dull and becomes boring almost near the end.

The performances are extremely good from all the five female characters. These women gave strong, intense, but believable performances that demonstrate the actresses' dramatic abilities.

The legal concepts helped a lot to understand the plot's difficulty because the legal term of sodomy is different from a simple raping. From the point of view of Meg's defense, sodomy needs to be penalized as a raping (a huge crime grade B) although it's a different crime. Pat and Alex's defense claims that Meg enjoyed and asked for it. This is where the movie turns interesting to see who is trying to tell the truth. The only thing for sure is that the sex scene fits into a legal definition of a crime.

Watch "Jaded" if you like legal issues that aren't very common in your society. If not, give it a try because it's a very good and strong drama.

"Jaded" takes on the complex question of abuse: the perpetrators and the victims. In lesser hands it would have degenerated into an erotic thriller made for direct-to-video. This director, however, has managed to pull off a textured multi-layered study with a decidedly different point of view.

Given the fact that the director/writer is a woman and the main detective and D.A. are also women, this could have turned into a very anti-male film. It is not. To be a sexual predator IS gender neutral. The nudity of this film is not erotic. The rape is brutal not sexual. We are looking at victims and not titillation.

The gifted cast rings true. For a film that is so little known, I was surprised at the quality of the performances. They are good. Carla Gugino and Rya Kihlstedt are incredible.

Somehow, this film got lost. Perhaps it is too smart for its own good. It is a "should see". Highly recommend. A thinking person's sexual thriller.

From the comments below, this movie apparently was not well-liked. With the subject matter being unusual, and some might say salacious, I get that many people may figure it as exploitative. I did not really see it that way. The film was clearly low-budget, and that did hurt it somewhat. I thought that a lot of the actors did fine jobs, if not Oscar-worthy. Rya Kihlstedt did well with a challenging role, and I liked Anna Levine and Aida Turturro as the detective. And Carla Gugino was very good, playing her damaged character with intensity. Someone below commented that she was "plump at the time". I don't know what she looks like now, but I thought she was gorgeous. A real woman's body looks far better than the currently popular Angelina-Jolie-type anorexic look which is NOT attractive. Although flawed, the movie held my interest throughout.

I disagree with the other comments made about this movie, because I didn't think the movie was all that bad, I mean, it had a good point to it, which is in the tagline, not all preditors are men, which goes to show us women that we shouldn't just go hating men because they rape women, because women can just as easily cause just as much physical and emotional pain from the damage of rape. Before I watched this movie I didn't even KNOW it was possible for a women to rape another women, so it's opened my eyes WIDE open. I also thought that Carla Gugino's acting was excellent too, she must of had to dig deep to do this role. And I didn't think the rest of the acting was all that bad either. My overall rating of this movie, would probably be 7/10 which is farely good, since not many movies make it past 5 and 6. If you like an intense film about rape, you would like this one. The only foibles I had with this movie was as was mentioned earlier, the "no show" court case that everyone expects, they shouldn't have let the chase for the offenders gone on so long, so that they could have fit the court scene in, it just would have made the movie so much better.