Reviews

I love the genre, so I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary. Due to the years covered (1927- 2007) within a limited time span (108 min), omissions are inevitable. But up to the nineties I think the makers did a great job selecting the defining movie musicals of the decades. In their coverage of the nineties, however, they ignore the big screen and turn to the small screen instead, thus saying no movie musicals of any importance were made within the decade, and thereby dismissing Sister Act (1992), Woody Allen's Everyone says I love you (1996) and most curiously Evita (1996), which did well at the box office, won the lead actress a Golden Globe, and was nominated for several Oscars. Maybe it was a matter of not getting the rights to show clips of these movies, but the omission was a disappointment nonetheless.

This combination of social drama and soft porn has many bizarre moments, but is actually pretty well acted by Hugo Metsers and especially the stunning Carry Tefsen, with a off beat beauty that reminds of Liza Minnelli.

Metsers, just released from prison, gets a flat in one of the huge Bijlmer buildings near Amsterdam (brand new in the late sixties, when this movie got made). Soon he finds out that this building is full of sex addicted housewifes. He enjoys this to the fullest, eventually starting a small business in orgies. While most of the women seem to have no control over their lust after Metsers, his neighbour Tefsen, happily married but with a unstoppable sex drive, is in full control all the time. She encourages the young man to explore all the sexual possibilities this building has to offer, giving him the confidence he so badly needs after four years in prison. Later she runs the orgie business along side him.

After the movie was shown at the Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht this year, Tefsen appeared on stage. She was welcomed to an wild ovation and shared some set stories along with director Wim Verstappen. It turned out she actually saw the film in full for the first time that night and was pleasantly suprised by her performance some thirty-two years earlier. She also thought the movie was a beautiful time capsule, showing life in the Netherlands of those days in a pretty honest way. Tefsen still looked radiant at the festival and it is a shame she gets so few chances to show her talents as filmactress. Over the years she played many well-recieved parts on stage though, especially in musicals such as Oliver, Fiddler on the Roof, Man of La Mancha, Irma la Douce and the Dutch classic De Jantjes.

After promising performances in DICK TRACY and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, Madonna's part in this erotic thrilller must have been a disappointment for her fans worldwide.

On the positive side, she looks stunning. Very blonde, very stylish, it seems to be a tribute to the Marlene Dietrich look of the forties and fifties. Actually BODY OF EVIDENCE has been compared with Dietrich's classic courtroom drama WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION. Both courtroom dramas, both starvehicles for so so actrices, the endresults couldn't be further apart. Marlene made the most of her juicy role and made a glorious comeback. Madonna, blinded by her desire make a movie to go with her Erotica album, agreed to her poorest script since SHANGHAI SURPRISE and was destined to fail from the first day of shooting.

The sex scenes are probably the best thing about this movie. It takes a lot of guts (to pretend) to get it on like this in front of a camera crew! Both Madonna and Willem Dafoe convince in these scenes (as they should, since these scenes are the reason why BODY OF EVIDENCE got made in the first place!) The movie as a whole is boring and often bad acted. Rent the DVD and make the most of scene selection, is my suggestion. And thank God for EVITA!