Having never consciously heard one of her recordings, I can't write about Madonna's part in the Tin Pan Alley conspiracy. But movie-making is not rock-videos, and here we see, as if on X-ray, right through her to the bad teeth, mean little face (behind the caked make-up), wiry little bottom and shortish legs. Considering she is a "singer", even her speaking voice is tawdry and unnuanced.
Madonna started her obsessive search for fame and fortune by posing for nude shots. There's one of her at about 17 years old on a NY apartment window ledge, looking kind of alluring, with her dark Italian curls and big black eyes. But it's all been downhill from there, as hordes of commercial artists fiddled with her image until she became the chameleon lady of a thousand different looks on a thousand different magazine covers.
In Body of Evidence, a film that should never have been made about a prosecution that should never have been brought to court, she is the irresistibly sexy galley owner, heavily into kinky sex with submissive males. I suppose the idea of playing a dominatrix appealed to this sociopathically ambitious person but she has no idea of how to convey it on the screen, which would require acting abilities.
If we believed in her magnetic powers of domination, there might be a certain compulsion to the picture, instead she unwittingly reveals herself as a banal person who has succeeded in conveying many false selves to millions of other punters around the world.
Madonna might have been able to con the tinselly world of pop music and women's magazines, but the movie camera sees through her with horrid clarity.
Madonna started her obsessive search for fame and fortune by posing for nude shots. There's one of her at about 17 years old on a NY apartment window ledge, looking kind of alluring, with her dark Italian curls and big black eyes. But it's all been downhill from there, as hordes of commercial artists fiddled with her image until she became the chameleon lady of a thousand different looks on a thousand different magazine covers.
In Body of Evidence, a film that should never have been made about a prosecution that should never have been brought to court, she is the irresistibly sexy galley owner, heavily into kinky sex with submissive males. I suppose the idea of playing a dominatrix appealed to this sociopathically ambitious person but she has no idea of how to convey it on the screen, which would require acting abilities.
If we believed in her magnetic powers of domination, there might be a certain compulsion to the picture, instead she unwittingly reveals herself as a banal person who has succeeded in conveying many false selves to millions of other punters around the world.
Madonna might have been able to con the tinselly world of pop music and women's magazines, but the movie camera sees through her with horrid clarity.