Who’s a girl gotta suck around here to get a drink?
Thirty years ago this fall, raven-haired beauty Linda Fiorentino gifted us with one of the great femme fatales of all time in John Dahl’s excellent neo-noir The Last Seduction (1994). Bridget Gregory is iconic, a deliciously manipulative grifter with a sardonic streak. She’s cold and calculating, but always utterly self-aware. Like many classic femme fatales, Bridget escapes an abusive man, who also happens to be her partner in crime, and absconds with the lout’s money, too. After all, it’s the least the jerk could do for her.
The Last Seduction will always stand as Fiorentino’s crowning achievement. As Bridget/Wendy, she’s quite simply a force of nature, commanding our attention every minute she’s on screen—and, thankfully, she’s on screen for most of the movie. Fiorentino infuses the character with a sharply funny sarcasm and a complete disregard for anyone else’s feelings but her own. She’s seeking money and pleasure, and she’ll use the latter to get the former.
The male supporting actors are each very good—Bill Pullman, Peter Berg, and Bill Nunn—but this is Fiorentino’s show, and she never fails to captivate. New Yorker Bridget (who uses the alias Wendy for much of the film) is on the run after stealing her husband’s (Pullman) illegally obtained cash. She meets Berg’s lonely and self-pitying Mike in small-town Western New York and immediately sees an easy mark, one she can manipulate into disposing of the husband, who’s trying to find her and get the money back.
And, goodness, does she know how to manipulate. As a conniving, unscrupulous, overtly sexual being, Fiorentino absolutely destroys the men who get her in way. She takes the femme fatale trope to new, modern heights,. Instead of dancing around sexual innuendo, she bluntly says what she’s thinking, and in that husky, sultry, nonchalant voice of Fiorentino’s it all sounds utterly mesmerizing.
Bridget isn’t just a tough dame, she’s a comedic genius. An early scene in a bar, when she curtly orders a Manhattan, is ignored by the bartender, and then blurts out, “Who’s a girl gotta suck around here to get a drink?” is riotously funny. Then there’s the time Mike says he can’t figure out whether she’s a bitch or not and she deadpans with absolute certainty, “I am a total fucking bitch.” She’s tough-talking and completely at ease with herself. She not only seduces Mike, but also viewers who can’t ignore the power and majesty of Fiorentino’s performance.
Fiorento’s breakout work in The Last Seduction brought with it serious Oscar talk. Unfortunately, she and the film weren’t eligible because it premiered on HBO before opening in theaters. All these years later it’s clear that she gave one of the truly great performances of 1994 while setting the bar impossibly high for future actresses attempting to play the femme fatale. Bridget is Bad Girl royalty, through and through.
When I talk about Linda Fiorentino’s nineties work, I always like to joke that her movies carried a warning label on the VHS boxes: “Danger! Flammable contents inside.” It’s funny because you can see how it might actually be true. Few actresses ever scorched the screen with such raw, sexual intensity, before or since. As Bridget in The Last Seduction, Fiorentino delivered one of the slyest, sexiest performances in noir history. I’ll accept no arguments to the contrary.
This post is one of many that our resident French maid, business manager, and all-around Gal Friday Yvette rescued from oblivion, deep in the Starfire Lounge archives.
Yvette: In my previous career as a globe-hopping spy, I played ze part of ze femme fatale quite often and, if I may say so, did an exquisite job. Much of being ze bad girl comes down to ze right attitude and ze best couture. How do you think I keep negotiating salary increases from you so frequently, monsieur? Like Bridget, I know how to play ze long seduction game, zat is how!
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