I saw this on cable and would have been sorely disappointed if I had viewed it in a theater. It's not a very satisfying film because it's so monotone and devoid of energy--all strippers are depressed, self-hating junkies who grow more pathetic as they age. Even the facial expressions are frozen in a way that's more typical of 40-something actresses than of silicone-enhanced 20-something dancers.
The movie is ostensibly about strippers, but it's really about five actresses working overtime to create their characters and show that, despite their age, they can take their clothes off with the best of them. It's hard for these well-known TV and movie actresses to submerge themselves in their roles, and apart from Kristin Bauer who plays porn star Nico (an allusion to Warhol's Queen of heroin), none of them really succeeds at it. We're supposed to be applauding them for having the courage to strip bare in front of an audience, but it's clearly an ego trip for these women to show off those personally-trained bodies in which mainstream Hollywood has lamentably lost interest.
What would have been truly courageous, I think, would have been to use talented unknowns in the lead roles, but that too poses the risk of leaving the audience with five characters in search of a coherent storyline.
The problem may be too many story lines that go nowhere--notably, Sandra Oh as a talented poet whose verse is good enough to get her a university fellowship, but who seems not to know it. She meets a college instructor, and there's a flourishing romance, until he realizes how uncomfortable he is with her stripping and bails from the relationship. The break-up is established through a long, mournful scene in which she dances in the club, knowing he's present in the audience. The camera never really strays from her face, which makes for claustrophobia rather than intensity. Another subplot that fizzles involves Daryl Hannah's seeming rendezvous with death in the former of a stalker who sends her expensive presents. What happens when they get together is both ambiguous and anticlimactic. Sheila Kelley's character is so underdeveloped that it could have been omitted it entirely while Jennifer Tilley's repulsive punk dominatrix suggests she's way over her head.
I can't help comparing this film to HBO's plucky "G String Divas," a documentary in which the women were no more likable but far more interesting. A number had university degrees, and several saw themselves as entrepreneurs stashing away cash to beat the system. There was a contemptuous, carnival-like atmosphere in which the men were there to be fleeced and discarded. Some women had kids; some were lesbians; some were bisexual and involved in complicated relationships. At the end of the day, it seemed like a business rather than the sado-masochistic playpen for decaying flesh that "Dancing at the Blue Iguana" makes stripping out to be.
The movie is ostensibly about strippers, but it's really about five actresses working overtime to create their characters and show that, despite their age, they can take their clothes off with the best of them. It's hard for these well-known TV and movie actresses to submerge themselves in their roles, and apart from Kristin Bauer who plays porn star Nico (an allusion to Warhol's Queen of heroin), none of them really succeeds at it. We're supposed to be applauding them for having the courage to strip bare in front of an audience, but it's clearly an ego trip for these women to show off those personally-trained bodies in which mainstream Hollywood has lamentably lost interest.
What would have been truly courageous, I think, would have been to use talented unknowns in the lead roles, but that too poses the risk of leaving the audience with five characters in search of a coherent storyline.
The problem may be too many story lines that go nowhere--notably, Sandra Oh as a talented poet whose verse is good enough to get her a university fellowship, but who seems not to know it. She meets a college instructor, and there's a flourishing romance, until he realizes how uncomfortable he is with her stripping and bails from the relationship. The break-up is established through a long, mournful scene in which she dances in the club, knowing he's present in the audience. The camera never really strays from her face, which makes for claustrophobia rather than intensity. Another subplot that fizzles involves Daryl Hannah's seeming rendezvous with death in the former of a stalker who sends her expensive presents. What happens when they get together is both ambiguous and anticlimactic. Sheila Kelley's character is so underdeveloped that it could have been omitted it entirely while Jennifer Tilley's repulsive punk dominatrix suggests she's way over her head.
I can't help comparing this film to HBO's plucky "G String Divas," a documentary in which the women were no more likable but far more interesting. A number had university degrees, and several saw themselves as entrepreneurs stashing away cash to beat the system. There was a contemptuous, carnival-like atmosphere in which the men were there to be fleeced and discarded. Some women had kids; some were lesbians; some were bisexual and involved in complicated relationships. At the end of the day, it seemed like a business rather than the sado-masochistic playpen for decaying flesh that "Dancing at the Blue Iguana" makes stripping out to be.