film

Here is a coolly subversive slice of mid-80s downtown New York cinema, directed by Bette Gordon and co-written with Kathy Acker. Set amid the grindhouse cinemas of Times Square, it follows Christine, played by Sandy McLeod, a concession stand worker who starts to watch the pornographic films she sells tickets for and then develops a fixation on a mysterious customer. Gordon eschews titillation and flips the gaze in a way that was decidedly radical for the time, exploring female desire and spectatorship.

Shot with a detached, quasi-documentary eye, the film captures a seedy, pre-gentrification Manhattan, while its spare narrative drifts into obsession and ambiguity, and John Lurie's score adds much to the atmosphere. Variety's interrogation of who gets to look and how is strikingly modern and very much still relevant.