BASIC INSTINCT

I have already said it here, I sometimes face a stupid difficulty: that of not being able to find the right outfit to illustrate one of the articles published on this site.

“Basic Instinct” is the best example. Even though it is one of my favorite movies and the text of the following article has been ready for a long time, I had not until now managed to find the right hook in photographic terms: I do not live in San Francisco, I am not Sharon Stone, I do not want to appear openly sexual in my photos and I did not have until now the outfit that would be incendiary enough to worthily evoke the sulfurous heroine of the film. I even considered at one point finally personifying Michael Douglas, the other protagonist of the film.

The dress I was looking for was never a replica of an infamous white dress whose moment of glory takes place in an interrogation room at a San Francisco police station – to be honest, that white dress never inspired me, even though it looks great paired with the white shawl-collar coat and is perfectly worn by Sharon Stone.

No, the dress I was looking for is only visible in a few shots, in the nightclub scene. The scene may last a few minutes, but the dress has been haunting my mind since I first watched the movie (which is, quite simply, 30 years ago).

The dress I found was noticeably different when I bought it: it had sequins instead of straight sprinkles, had a lighter color than the much-sought-after Holy Grail, and had sleeves. But it had a nice scoop in the back, and I could play with the overall structure of the dress. Once the sleeves were cut off and the fabric of said sleeves used to make the collar, we were almost there, thanks to my dear mother whose talents as a seamstress are no longer to be demonstrated.

Now let’s move on to the film.

“Basic Instinct”, directed in 1992 by Paul Verhoeven follows the investigation of police officer Nick Curran (played by Michael Douglas) following the brutal murder of a rock star. The murder having been committed with an ice pick in the middle of sexual intercourse, the investigation quickly leads Nick to the victim’s magnetic girlfriend, Catherine Tramell (played by Sharon Stone).

Catherine, a successful novelist, is the perfect suspect: she wrote a detective novel a few years earlier in which the male victim is brutally murdered with an ice pick during lovemaking.

Are we following Nick’s investigation? Yes but no.

We enter Catherine’s world.

Because it is Catherine who seems to be playing cat and mouse with Nick: self-confident, intelligent and informed, she fully assumes her bisexual lifestyle, her occasional cocaine use, her lack of feelings towards the man with whom she had sexual relations and does not hesitate to put Nick – who has addictions coupled with a troubled judicial past – in the hot seat.

Nick, who is convinced of Catherine’s guilt without being able to prove it, falls for this sulfurous woman who does not hesitate – it seems – to manipulate everyone, whether it is her lover Roxy, the psychiatrist who follows Nick, Elisabeth Garner, whom she knew when they were students at university and of course Nick himself. However, is she the real criminal who, driven by a feeling of omnipotence, describes her crimes in her novels or is she the victim of an impostor who draws inspiration from her books, to kill?

The end of the movie will tell.

Or not.

While doing some research to write this article, I realized that the clear answer I had arrived at regarding the identity of the culprit of the murder was not clear for others who hesitated between two potentially guilty female figures. And it is true that each of the two theories holds up.

This mechanism of doubt and double is terribly Hitchcockian if we refer to “Vertigo”: Roxy is Catherine’s double, as is also Elisabeth, as is also Hazel Dobkins, a friend of Catherine. All these women are, each in their own way, fatal. Catherine’s parents died in a disturbing accident that left her a wealthy heiress, Roxy was tried for the murder of her family, Hazel too and Elisabeth’s husband died in dubious circumstances.

They each personify the archetype of the femme fatale that evolves in American film noir and neo-noir.

If we must refer to Sir Alfred – and I am not even talking about the music by Jerry Goldsmith composed for “Basic Instinct”, which is reminiscent of that of Bernard Hermann, Hitchcock’s favorite composer – the famous white dress paired with an equally white coat worn by Sharon Stone is reminiscent of the white coat with a shawl collar worn in “Vertigo” by Madeleine, the ideal woman who will soon be reincarnated as the avatar that is Judy (both roles being played by the same actress, Kim Novak) to hasten the fatal fate of the male protagonist Scotty (James Stewart). Similarly, Catherine Tramell’s blonde hair and bun are reminiscent of Madeleine/Judy’s.

The angel of death is – apparently – often sublime, often blond and often dressed in white if I believe “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, “Leave it to Heaven”, “Vertigo”, “Out Of the Past” or even “The Lady from Shanghai”, because the facade of angelism hides the greatest darkness.

And indeed, Catherine Tramell is a femme fatale of film noir: intelligent, beautiful, seductive and manipulative, she inexorably leads the male hero towards his destiny – said destiny often being dark.

I don’t even know if we should talk about a “male hero”.

First of all, Nick is not a hero and turns out to be rather unpleasant, without values and subject to his addictions – not that Catherine is more sympathetic but at least she is interesting and strongheaded. This is why I never understood the controversy around the movie: gay and bi activists claimed that the film followed a pattern of negative depictions and stereotypes of bisexual and homosexuals in film, but to me the heterosexual protagonist is way worse than the bisexual character.

In addition, the story may begin with Nick Curran and he seems to be the main protagonist during the first minutes of the movie but this is not the case in reality. He quickly becomes an accessory and is just as quickly manipulated by the one who actually becomes the main character of the story, namely the femme fatale. In “Basic Instinct”, we ultimately follow less the story of Nick Curran than that of Catherine Tramell.

I like that, coming from a male director, a male director of the 90s.

Let’s face it: it is Sharon Stone who radiates on the silver screen, not Michael Douglas.