The Last Seduction
When Mike tells her how to find out if a man is cheating on his wife by reading his credit reports, Bridget invents a plan based on selling murders to cheated wives. She suggests they start with Lance Collier, a cheating, wife-beating husband residing in Florida. This proves to be the last straw for Mike, and he leaves her alone in his place after an argument. Meanwhile, the loan shark breaks Clay's thumb for not repaying his loan. Fearing for his health and in dire financial straits, he hires a private detective, Harlan, to retrieve the money from his wife.
The Last Seduction
We hear her before we see her, a contemptuous voice spitting abuse at a measured pace. Her targets are male subordinates, sweaty, desperate fellows trying to make a sale while she puts pressure on them. It's a marvelous opening, finally punctuated by Fiorentino's face. Appearing on-screen at long last, sleek-haired and red-lipped, she's an obstinate seductress of classic noir displaced in a 1990s erotic thriller. Bridget Gregory is a telemarketing manager living in New York City with her husband Clay. He's a drug-dealing loser who needs money fast to pay a loan shark. As soon as he's acquired $700,000, Bridget absconds with the loot. On her way to Chicago, she stops in a small town, Beston, and ends up forging a fake identity, finding a job and a fuckboy for her pleasure.
That's partially what attracts every man in the film to her Bridget. She feels superior and impenetrable, a challenging impossibility that harkens back to how audiences once upon a time regarded bigger-than-life movie stars. She's out of this world, but instead of alienation, this personal quality produces intractable attraction. Consider the seduction of her Bestonite lover, Mike Swale. Cocksure and touched by a hint of self-aggrandizing intoxication, he's ready to try his tricks on a beautiful stranger from out of town. Before he knows it, the power dynamics of the interaction have been rudely switched around, with her taking control. The way she does it is practiced, effortless, with a touch of blunt aggression and a direct stare. She tosses off her commands in a husky voice, molded by many cigarettes and whiskeys, aloof but never completely uninvested.
Whatever happened to Linda Fiorentino? She appears to be an actress made for the mid-to-late 90s, following up The Last Seduction with Jade, and then making the shift to comedy with Men in Black and Dogma, but then seemingly disappeared right after that. Evidently she's had some stalled projects and some bad relationships, but, other than that, nothing else from her in the last 20 years other than a couple of direct-to-video projects.
Bridget gets by on her wits, swindling and seducing her way through men and employment. In Buffalo, she meets Mike (Peter Berg), who is smitten with her beauty and her strangely reserved character. Bridget is initially annoyed with the ready-to-please Mike. But when she learns that Clay is gaining ground on her whereabouts, she decides to use Mike in a scheme to finally get rid of her husband, and strings him along for one last, lethal seduction. 041b061a72