Stephen Frears followed DANGEROUS LIAISONS with another tale of deceit, sex and death, Jim Thompson's THE GRIFTERS.
Crime writer Donald Westlake superbly adapts Thompson's terse tale of a trio of grifters' dark dealings in the LA sunshine.
They first appear memorably in split-screen: Lilly works for the mob around California racetracks, fixing the odds with last-minute betting (creaming some off the top for herself), Roy is her estranged son who works short-time cons while his new girlfriend Myra is also a con-artist, using her body if she has to.
Roy is beaten when a scam goes wrong, Lilly visits him for the first time in eight years and discovers him in pain so has him hospitalized. Lilly and Myra meet over Roy's hospital bed, instantly disliking each other.
When Roy dumps Myra for suggesting him and Lilly are too close, Myra's revenge changes all their lives...
Shelf or charity shop? One for the shelf: produced by Martin Scorsese, Stephen Frears delivers an excellent Film Noir which brings the form from the 1950s into 1990 Los Angeles. A fabulous sense of place surrounds Westlake's hard-boiled adaptation while Frears has the best cast to reference the old while bringing the new: John Cusack's baby-faced Roy subtly delivers the Montgomery Clift-style dude who thinks he can control his destiny. Both Anjelica Huston and Annette Bening totally deserved their Academy Award nominations as the duelling scorpions Lilly and Myra. Bening is wonderfully good while conjuring up Gloria Grahame amoral sexuality - I think it's her most memorable screen role. Anjelica Huston brings a flavour of the intensity of Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford to Lilly but with an icy remoteness that is chilling and all her own - she is frightening while in control and terrifying when she loses it. They are surrounded with a wonderful supporting cast of character actors including Henry Jones, Pat Hingle, JT Walsh, Charles Napier and Stephen Tobolowsky.
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