sandover There are very few films of sublime bad taste."Female Trouble" transcends even that.The moment Divine asks "Who wants to die for Art?", and after somebody from the audience stands up, says yes, and Divine starts shooting, something really unnerving happens: we pass from fierce satire - and as satire goes, the confines of the social - to the realm of the unconditional. We are not back into Breton's old surrealist adage "a surreal act is to get out and start shooting people", with its haughty, bourgeois accent, but in a new territory that challenges even that! I still cannot fathom this shifting of gears which exposes our pretensions, if not our infection; John Waters is accustomed in making categories collapse, and oppositions fall into each other, but this is unprecedented and followed by an assault that ends up in picturing Divine as a preposterous conversion of Dreyer's "Joan of Arc"! I would put this gem in the rare American tradition which starts with Gertrude Stein's Ida, a bizarre writing about the modernistic sainthood of fame and its vicissitudes. John Waters and his Divine saint make that miracle happen again: a sublime collusion between fame and shame, saint and quaint, and somehow a cry for affection.

strangerdave-2 John Waters certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea, but those who appreciate his sense of humor and his sense of bathos will love this film, and won't be satisfied (or fully appreciative of it) until they see it multiple times.The fabulous Divine stars as Dawn Davenport, a juvenile delinquent turned stripper/petty thief/hooker/abusive mother turned shrewish wife/model/celebrity turned mass murderer turned death row inmate, and pulls the multiple transitions off flawlessly. (He/she also transitions into the role as the father of Dawn's daughter Taffy, the result of a Christmas day quickie - one of the most disgusting and hilarious sex scenes ever captured on film - at least for public viewing.) While Divine, Mink Stole (as teenage Taffy Davenport), and David Lochary (as Donald Dasher, the beauty salon owner) are the only actors with real ability, the rest of the oddball cast complements perfectly the oddball storyline and dialog.I saw the film as a satire of life in America (or maybe life anywhere) - its obsession with celebrity, scandal, and materialism at the expense of family, faith, and true self-fulfillment, conveyed on film as only John Waters can.

ekeby I just looked through the reviews and the last one begins with the line "I seen this movie. . . ." and then goes on to call it the worst movie ever made and asks why, why was it ever made. Uh, friend? This movie was about YOU.Let's face it. There are some unfortunate people in this world. These are the people who are completely befuddled by a line like "I'll have two chicken breasts, please." The poor things. We know they'll never get it, there is no hope. If you know somebody who didn't like this movie--for whatever reason--drop them. They're not the kind of people you want to hang with.I was lucky enough to see Female Trouble when it was first released. It's hard to communicate how joyous an occasion it was. Finally, someone was making movies for US. Who was US? All the people in the theater laughing and cheering.There are so many quotable lines. Practically every line in the film--even out of context-- conveys its joy and lunacy. For years a friend and I quoted a line back to each other at appropriate times: "Yes I did, and I'm proud of it!" The line is delivered by Divine at her trial when she is asked if she killed her daughter. Pick any line at random; you'll find it will be appropriate to use SOME time during your life....I personally like this movie best of Waters' work. There is something profound about it, a quality few satires possess. I'm glad IFC is running this film so that younger versions of US can see and appreciate this movie, and know that they are not alone.

jonathan-577 Funnily enough, around the time that Divine sits in the crib with the pile of dead fish I started thinking about the words of the Bomb Squad's Hank Shocklee - "If they want noise, let's give them NOISE!" Yes, friends, Waters is the queer Public Enemy, tying identity to culture, cranking the most alienating elements of same to 11, and losing great chunks of his own demographic in the spectacular, chaotic process. This was made right off the midnight-movie success of "Pink Flamingos", and presumably this facilitated a budget, and presumably this led to the extra notch of competence that keeps the movie barreling forward from beginning to end - there's even an original theme song, plus thirty glorious seconds of Nervous Norvus singing "H-I-P". In most underground movies a scene featuring the lead actor, in two roles, raping himself for two full minutes - and THEN taking off his pants - would be the climax, not the inciting incident! And Edith "Flav" Massey yelling "NO I don't want any god damn eggs!" is an even better inversion than the new Bond's martini line. A triumphant cinematic masterpiece.