The Last Seduction

The Last Seduction is tightly directed by John Dahl, who has specialised in modern film noir in which beautiful but ice-cold, calculating women ruthlessly exploit gullible men.

Linda Fiorentino plays Bridget Gregory, the film's femme fatale, a sexy modern career woman who runs off from her unpleasant husband, Clay, with many thousands of dollars that the couple have swindled in a drug deal. Bridget hides out in a small provincial town while she waits to divorce Clay so that she can keep the money. Under an assumed name she gets a job and also begins a relationship with a colleague, the likeable Mike, who is fascinated by the exciting big-city woman from New York. It is a relationship based solely on sex, but Mike will not be fobbed off with that. He also demands intimacy and love, but Bridget has quite different plans for him.

The ingenious plot of The Last Seduction is entertaining, but the protagonist is so thoroughly evil that it is hard to stay involved in the drama for long. There is little ground for any emotional engagement in a film whose heroine is so ice-cold that in the end she becomes implausible.