Madonna and Julius: A Cinematic Retrospective – BODY OF EVIDENCE (1993)
The Ploughman Greta Taylor Tristan "Drunk Napoleon" Nankervis Julius Kassendorf
Madonna

In October 1992, Madonna cemented the most defining era of her career. If Justify My Love and Truth or Dare weren’t sexual enough, Madonna was going to make sure you knew she was a sexual creature with her new CD, Erotica, and her new book, Sex. Yup, here was Madonna full on hitting you over the head with sexual imagery. It was the 90s after all, and women were taking control of their sexuality. From the Riot Grrrls to pop princesses, women were finally declaring their independence from the Madonna/Whore dichotomy that men forced them into.

Except Madonna went into full on embracing the whore aspect. Madonna, at the time, was jumping from boyfriend to boyfriend, trying to find somebody to fall in love with. In 1991, she had been dating Warren Beatty, then Tony Ward. In 1992, she was dating Vanilla Ice, who dumped her because of the book Sex. Madonna was trying to connect through sexuality, and remade her image in that desire.

The picture book Sex is a combination of erotic photographic, including softcore pornographic imagery, and various texts. The text could be essays, stories, statements, poems. In all, it was meant to be an confrontation of the second wave feminist movement’s belief that pornography is automatically degrading to women. Madonna argues that looking at a naked woman is, in itself, not degrading because everybody has a sexuality. Similarly, posing for a naked photograph is not degrading.

To accompany this, Madonna released Erotica, an album made of sleazy disco beats and pornographic lyrics. For example, in Where Life Begins, she croons “So, won’t you go down where it’s warm inside?” Yup, its a whole song about cunnilingus. To this end, Madonna released the music video for Erotica, providing an advertisement for the book Sex. It was NSFW, and aired three times on MTV (after midnight), being the second video of hers that was banned from MTV.

The S&M imagery was continued from the Justify My Love video, but most of the video came from photo sessions for the book Sex. Madonna takes on the identity of Mistress Dita, who mixes pleasure with a little bit of pain. It’s a mix of kinky and sexy that pushes all of the buttons of America.

Which, of course, prompted a Madonna backlash. To this day, I can’t think of a Madonna album that has inspired such passionate love and hatred among even the fans. Erotica is either in your top 3 favorite Madonna albums or in your bottom 3. There is hardly any in between. This is, in no small part, due to the bluntness of the album. It’s a swanky, sleazy album that doesn’t inspire sexy times so much as shoves them down your throat. I love the album and even I can tell you this. It periodically has something to say about love and romance (such as Rain), but largely Madonna wants to explore lust in a “taboo” manner.

The overt sexuality of this incarnation led to 1993’s Body of Evidence, where Madonna is a woman accused of killing a man through kinky sex (and cocaine).

Julius

I do believe this was one of the videos my father rented at some point. He had a penchant for watching the sleazy sexy thrillers. My video store wasn’t like Blockbuster, where the videos came home in a generic boxes. This video store sent home the VHS tapes in clamshells adorned with the box art of the film. Which meant, I regularly got the eyefuls of my father’s renting habits. Body of Evidence, Whore, Boxing Helena, Stripped, Dressed to Kill, Body Heat. I remember all of these cases entering the house. He would try to hide them in the top shelf of a closet where we put our coats. I never watched them (he stayed up later than I was allowed), but I remember the boxes.

I also remember the backlash of this era of Madonna. My older sister wanted the book Sex, and my mother was pissed off by the sex. For the longest time, my parents wanted to protect me from sex. I wasn’t allowed to watch R-rated films on my own, and even the naked runners of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life were fast forwarded, while Christmas in Heaven was stopped completely. That paled in comparison to the sex that Madonna was selling.

I remember the performance of Bye Bye Baby on the MTV VMAs where Madonna was dressed in a tuxedo as the barker of a show cavorting with women in lingerie. Gender bending and queer sexuality? In my house, that was frowned upon.

But, Body of Evidence was so resoundingly trashed by everybody who came in contact with it that I didn’t see it until college, in which case I died laughing. Seriously. This movie is utterly hilarious. It’s a stinker. Oooo, Lord. They used to call bad movies a howler, and this movie makes you howl.

Madonna as Rebecca Carlson

The problems with Body of Evidence neither start nor end with Madonna as an actress. Madonna is surrounded by talent in this film, but nobody makes it out alive. Four-time Oscar Nominee Julianne Moore, Two-time Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe, Future-Oscar nominee and two-time Tony winner Frank Langella, Oscar Nominee Anne Archer, Emmy Nominee Joe Mantagna. All of them suck in this movie. Hell, the director, Uli Edel, had previously been responsible for both Last Exit to Brooklyn and Christiane F, both movies with relatively high regard.

The missing element in Body of Evidence lies with the screenwriter, Brad Mirman. Back then, Mirman was an x-factor, having only written Knight Moves at this point. That movie wasn’t great, but didn’t have the power behind it that Body of Evidence did. Still, the plot of Body of Evidence is a typical pot-boiler lark killed by the laughable dialogue that everybody has to deliver. The first two lines of dialogue: “Lousy morning.” “Mr. Andrew Marsh. Bagged and tagged. Better him than us.” Any two sentences of that last line would have gone together, but all three at once feel forced and childish. This continues with the initial scene where a detective finds a pair of clamps.

“What are these?”

“That…is…a nipple clamp.”

“How would you know?”

“He’s from LA.”

Seriously. We’re in sub-Eszterhas territory here.

Body of Evidence comes from the long line of early and mid 90s sex thriller noirs that followed in the wake of Basic Instinct, whose grubby fingerprints are all over Body of Evidence. Andrew Marsh was found dead, tied to a bed, watching his own pornographic movies that he made with Rebecca Carlson (Madonna). He had a weak heart, and had a heart attack after ingesting cocaine. But, of course, the prosecutor makes it out to be that Madonna murdered him with sex. The trial begins within 20 minutes of the movie, leaving Madonna to sit back and react to everybody’s testimony. To beef up her role, Madonna begins sleeping with her attorney, Frank Dulaney (Dafoe), exposing him to kinky thrills. Madonna plays the seductive slut who pours candle wax on Willem Dafoe, jerks him in a crowded elevator, fucks him on a car hood covered with broken glass, and eventually he cuffs her to the bed and anally rapes her, which she maybe likes?

The problem with Madonna’s role in Body of Evidence is in the twist. Her character did actually commit the central murder, and is badly acting her way out of it. It’s the sort of Hitchcockian Vertigo-esque twist that reassesses the film behind it. But, the reveal only comes after 90 minutes of terrible acting (even if it is intentionally terrible acting) and awful dialogue. Since it redefines the acting that came before it, perhaps we should start here, since this is the one scene where Madonna is acting, and not acting like she’s acting.

The whole movie before this scene was Madonna back in flatly seductive mode. In this final scene, Madonna turns that hurt seductress into a cold femme fatale. “Don’t look so hurt, Alan. I fucked you, I fucked Frank, I fucked Alan. That’s what I do. I fuck.” Attempting to channel Veronica Lake or even Sharon Stone, she goes after the heartless bitch mentality. But, her lines are delivered with a passionless flat tonality that betray the passion usually underlying the scene. Of course, with lines as hammy as the “I Fuck” rant, it’s hard to find a way to deliver them without chewing scenery.

Perhaps chewing scenery is what was called for. This scene needs to have a sense of playfulness to it. Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct delivered all of her lines as if she was a cat playing with a toy. There’s a sense of hard grace to her dialogue, and it’s almost as if Stone doesn’t care about anything. Madonna is almost earnest in her delivery in this final scene, which is the opposite of what this scene calls for.

But, let’s go back. We meet Rebecca Carlson at Andrew’s funeral being accosted by Frank.

Herein lies the difficulty of this film. Madonna is acting terribly here. She’s offering shitty dialogue in stiff, forced rants, with moralization to boot. But, Rebecca Carlson is, in turn, putting on a show and acting terribly. So, if Rebecca is supposed to be a hammy barely believable actress, then is Madonna genuinely turning in a good performance? Here’s the range of Madonna as Rebecca Carlson:

Seductive Madonna.

Mildly bitchy Madonna. (For context, Julianne Moore is Frank’s wife who knows that Frank and Rebecca have been sleeping around).

Stressed Madonna.

Distressed Madonna.

More seductive Madonna.

There is a cornucopia of Madonnas in her meaty (and hilarious) courtroom scene.

All of them are delivered with the same flat distance. The range of Madonna as Rebecca acting innocent is flat, neutered, out of touch, emotionless. But, there’s a joylessness to her performance here. Which is a damn distraction considering how much joy she can display, especially since her last movie was A League of Their Own. She’s not even playing it straight so much as she’s playing it flat.

Julianne Moore in the bathroom scene conveys more with her eyes than Madonna does in the entire movie, even her scenes with Willem Dafoe are filled with terrible and flat dialogue that even she can’t rescue. We’re left with the question we had back in Bloodhounds of Broadway and Shanghai Surprise, “could anybody make this shitty screenplay work?”

Part of what makes Madonna a terrible actress is the inability to know a shitty screenplay when she sees one. If we remember, Madonna picked Shanghai Surprise against Sean Penn’s will. And, Madonna picked Body of Evidence because it matched so well with everything she was doing with Sex and Erotica. Even if the screenplay is one of the worst screenplays ever written, she chose to be in the role. Many of her choices in this movie will be continued in next week’s Dangerous Game, to better effect.

Julius

I love hating on this movie, because it is such trash. In reality, this displays the worst of Madonna’s acting, and her ego is popping back up in weird ways. The main thing I want you to notice in this film is the highlighting of the eyes. Go back to the police station questioning scene, and see how the light is slashed across her eyes at all times? That’s a motif throughout Body of Evidence, but it comes back in a few weeks with The Next Best Thing. This light is practically her ego blinding her from all the terrible decisions she’s making. After all, Uli Edel was a relatively new director who had one American movie under his belt. Body of Evidence would send him into television hell until he emerged with 2008’s German Foreign Language Oscar nominee film, The Baader-Meinhof Complex.

Results

Good Actress – Average Actress – Bad Actress: 4 – 1 – 4