Female Trouble (1974)

US New Line DVD edition




Female Trouble, one of John Waters best movies (and my favourite along with his more commercial Hairspray from 1988.
Divine is magnificent in a great woman role in a bizarre Baltimore melodrama about the Ugly, the Dirty and the Mean.
Very funny where a woman's life is shown in various tableau, her school life, her work life, the housewife years and finally
her career as a Crime model. The film starts in 1960 when Dawn Davenport (Divine) attends high-school, a dysfunctional
student with a too high hair (a theme that Waters later engorged himself with in Hairspray) and who hates everyone,
except her two delinquent buddies Concetta and Chicklette (Cookie Muller and Susan Walsh).

After qutting school and leaving home, and after getting her daughter Taffy (Mink Stole) she enters the working phase of her life, where
she works as a waitress, as a stripper and as a robber, and then she marries the handsome hairdresser Gater (Michael Potter).
But, unfortunately, she then gets lured by the nihilistic sleazebag couple The Dasher's (David Lochary and Mary-Vivian Pearce) to be
photographed as a "Crime Model" which ends badly. Edith Massey here plays the angry neighbour woman Aunt Ida walking around
in a tight black leather dress ..... Ugh, my eyes, My Eyes !

DVD in anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 and with a 2.0 stereo or original mono english audio, region 1, trailers extra and a fine audio
commentary by John Waters

 

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