Claire Dolan

For those of you who have seen this and are looking for a message, I can say that the brutal facts of life, that is to say, an animal existence, will out. Whether we are talking about sexual desire and sexual release, or about reproduction--especially that--it is the fundamental animal drives that control our lives and dictate our actions.

This movie offers nothing beyond that, and it shouldn't. It is perfect as it is. There is no phony sentimentality to entice us to delusion, or any sort of Hollywood ending. There is no redemption here. There is no spirituality. There is only desire and fulfillment; desire and frustration; desire and the end of desire which comes with... The movie doesn't say.

I don't know if this makes my top ten of the nineties--I have seen a lot of movies--but it makes my most memorable. I will not forget this stark performance by Katrin Cartlidge, who plays Claire Dolan. She does not have the charisma of a great actress, and the range of what is required here is limited, but within that range she is stunning. A good part of the credit surely goes to director Lodge Kerrigan, who emphasizes the tight, washed out lines of desperation on her face, along with her intense sexual desire and the stark, rapacious environment of the urban jungle in which she plies her trade. This is a movie that might well be viewed following Pretty Woman (1990). I wonder how many people who allowed themselves to identify with Julia Roberts as a whore, would like to identify with the high class prostitute of this film. Could they even watch it?

I was mesmerized by the sharp cuts and the film verité editing, the effective use of line and shadow, sound and silence, the clean, focused camera work. Our modern cities in all their indifference--the hard concrete and steel, the harsh lighting and intrusive sounds--are captured brilliantly. The script, cut lean and without comment, surprises us by turns, and keeps us on the edge of our seat throughout. The sex scenes are raw, intense and numerous. This is not a film for the kiddies. And that is an understatement.

Vincent D'Onofrio, who is an actor of suburb balance, plays the cabby who loves women, especially perhaps those in great need of his love, and he plays his part with subtlety and control. Colm Meaney plays the psychopathic pimp, a brutal man without conscience who uses force when necessary and a kind of cheap charm when it isn't. He has the type of the animal trainer, who plies the whip and the carrot, which he uses on women. Note well how Kerrigan has ironically emphasized this despicable man's ability to reproduce himself, making him the father of four children.

If I could sum up the life that Claire Dolan leads, I would say she lives among the wolves with a burden...her sexuality. She has a flat affect, strangely bereft of normal human expression. She is a kind of woman seldom seen on the silver scene, presented without an ounce of sentimentality. She feels life most strongly through sexuality, and only smiles at the result of sexual behavior, children. There is something profound in the realization that she is only really freed from her almost maniacal desire when she is with child. Meaney's character says he has known her since she was twelve and she has always been and always will be a whore. She will die a whore, he says. If true--and again, the movie lets us decide for ourselves--the question is, how did she become that way? The implication is that she was led or forced into prostitution at twelve. That is why she cannot feel about sex the way others feel, and that is why she finds it so difficult to feel affection for others. Hers has been an animal existence. She is always on her guard, and she shies away from a world that seems always about to hurt her brutally.

To my surprise, upon viewing this movie, I discovered that it is a love story...albeit dark, depressing love story with little if any light at the end of the tunnel. Claire Dolan (the late Katrin Cartlidge) is a high priced prostitute working to pay off her pimp. She tries to escape from New York to a town in New Jersey to live a legitimate life as a hairstylist. Believing she's being followed one night, she hits on Elton (Vincent D'Onofrio) in a bar in order to obtain protection. However, as she slow dances with him, she becomes less fixated on watching for enemies and surrenders to the romantic moment.

Eventually she's sucked back into life as a prostitute but Elton sticks with her. Their sexual relationship starts out rather stiff and impersonal but gradually becomes more passionate as she comes to trust him, and he becomes increasingly obsessed with her and with trying to understand her sordid life. Meanwhile Claire's evil pimp (the fine Irish actor Colm Meaney, the only upbeat character in this film) isn't happy about her love affair and does what he can to interfere by playing Claire and Elton against one another.

Most of the sex in this film is cold, but there are two tender, passionate love scenes between the Claire and Elton which caused me to root for them as a couple. On the other hand, be warned that there is a scene between them toward the end which is a bit hairy. This film is definitely not for kids under 17.

"Claire Dolan" isn't a great movie as it is overly artsy, complete with perpetually frowning actors and monosyllabic dialogue. I found it rather hard to believe that businessmen would pay hundreds of dollars to sleep with Claire, who is so grim, pale and waifish that she seems better suited to a gothic film than an erotic drama. I recommend the movie for fans of Vincent D'Onofrio, as this is one of his better indie film performances; he proves here that he can do understated roles as well as he does the big, showy stuff. Female fans may find him exceptionally attractive here...great hair, guy's-guy wardrobe, big puppy dog eyes. It's certainly an interesting movie, despite its drawbacks, and many of its scenes have stuck with me.

We open on images of urban architecture. Skyscrapers, high-rise apartments, covered in opaque glass and shot at angles that serve less to show us what lies inside these buildings than to reflect the world without.

This world is an ominous place and few people are made more aware of it than the titular Claire Dolan.

A Manhattan prostitute who caters to sorry, white-collar johns, Claire has a moment of clarity when her elderly mother dies under mysterious, unresolved circumstances. For Claire, intimacy has always been a carefully-constructed illusion she creates for her clients. "You're not like other men," she's fond of saying. "You're beautiful," they're found of replying. Neither is entirely true (no disrespect to deceased actress Katrin Cartlidge, who some will remember from noteworthy performances in Breaking the Waves or Naked).

When relationships are measured in dollars and every human exchange comes with cost, it's no surprise when Claire only has a passerby on the street to confide "I just buried my mother." The stranger offers little comfort. Claire attempts to restart her life across the Hudson River but ultimately fails to outrun her past - they have a way of catching up to people and hers comes in the form of her pimp (Colm Meaney, overjoyed to be playing something other than an Irish gangster). Along the way, she meets and ultimately falls in love with sensitive taxi driver, Elton (Vincent D'Onofrio, in what future generations will term his "svelte period"), playing wink-wink with a film archetype made famous by Scorsese and De Niro. Claire later seeks emotional consolation via the bearing of a child - it's unclear if this is a repudiation of her former lifestyle or the ultimate indulgence in it. We're left to judge this for ourselves.

The film is sexual but not sexy. The only time we can reasonably certain of Claire's pleasure in the sex act is during a tryst with Elton after he agrees to help pay off her debts. Like Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher, Cache, Funny Games), writer/director Lodge Kerrigan is consistently indicting the audience of its crimes (remember those reflective surfaces of the opening). Just as Claire cannot experience true intimacy, neither can we. The camera is a voyeur, frequently recording Claire's passionless sex with johns from across the room, around corners, through the crack of a door left ajar, and if we still didn't get it, reflected on a blackened television screen. All the while, she has the bored/wounded look of an aging porn star, her eyes - those windows of the soul - serving less to show us what lies within than reflect the world without.

Interesting footnote: Lodge Kerrigan would later direct a film called In God's Hands that had to be abandoned after severe damage to the negative (it starred Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard). Steven Soderbergh was a producer on that film, as he would be on Kerrigan's incredible picture, Keane. That film is available on DVD with cuts by both director and producer, an interesting exercise in filmschoolishness.

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