Variety

Summary

Christine lives in New York and needs a job. She finds one at the box office of a porn cinema, where she sits between the street and the entrance. Everyone entering the cinema must walk past her. Gradually, she develops a fascination for the porn industry. When one of the customers invites her to a baseball game and suddenly leaves, she decides to follow him. Her obsession takes her to dark streets and fish markets, perhaps into the world of the mafia. The more she follows her desires, the more she seems to resemble the image of a porn star. Her journalist boyfriend distances himself from her, her mother and a friend leave worried messages on her answerphone. Eventually, she tells the man she’s been stalking to meet her at a street corner.

"Variety" inverts the traditional narrative structure of cinema – whereby a man watches and a woman is watched – without showing, and thus flaunting, the object of female desire. Creating a counter-narrative to Hollywood, Bette Gordon asks the same question formulated by Teresa de Lauretis in "Oedipus Interruptus": "How did Medusa feel upon seeing herself in Perseus' mirror just before being slain?"

Source: 69. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)