Movie Review	Movie Reviews Archive

The Devil's Backbone
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Starring Fernando Tielve, Frederico Luppi, Marisa Paredes, Inigo Garces, Eduardo Noriega
How to order The Business of Strangers
Directed by Patrick Stettner
Starring Stockard Channing, Julia Stiles, Fred Weller
How to order

Now that the holidays are over and you've had your fill of wizards, elves, hobbits, and the dirty little secrets of British boarding schools, it may be time for more adult movies. You know, films that reflect seriously upon the reality of everyday life and help us grapple with the myriad, complicated problems we all face in a world that's too quickly falling apart. So what better than a neat brace of independents: the first is about crazed faux-lesbian avengers who decide to give back to the male-dominated business world what they have been putting up with for years; the second is about a group of boys who decide to take revenge on an evil Franco-supporting murderous bully in an isolated boys school during the Spanish Civil War.

View our poll archive

Patrick Stettner's The Business of Strangers-- he both wrote and directed-- is a neat, mostly nasty, revenge thriller about business, sex, and resentment. Julie Styron (Stockard Channing) is a driven, top-notch sales manager for leading software company who, as the film begins, fears she is about to be fired and lashes out at Paula Murphy (Julia Stiles), a petulant and sullen technical staffer who has ruined an important presentation. But her feared dismissal turns into a surprise promotion, and she benevolently takes the younger woman under her wing and into her confidence. Mistake. The sexy and alluring Paula-- she claims to be a writer who uses her own life as material-- likes playing mind games. When she isn't coaxing Julie into behaving like tiffed lesbian lovers arguing about a black strap-on in a crowded elevator, she is plotting the seduction and humiliation of Nick Harris (Fred Weller), a reptilian head-hunter, by claiming that he is a rapist. Poor Julie-- so savvy in the world of business but rather emotionally normal-- doesn't stand a chance against the elegant, labyrinthine plotting of her new friend, whose notion of a hostile takeover is to mind-fuck her compatriots until they're near-helpless.

Most critics have labeled The Business of Strangers a female version of Neil La Bute's highly touted In the Company of Men-- a witty, intensely homoerotic, ultimately preachy David Mamet-esque look at male bonding in the corporate world. But the truth is that The Business of Strangers is far closer to the 1993 thriller Single White Female, in which nutty Jennifer Jason Leigh stalks and fucks-up roommate Bridget Fonda. Stettner never avoids the deeper psychological implications of his characters-- the sexual tensions build quite nicely without ever harming the basic "thriller" narrative. But he's more interested in the fabric of the emotional gothic here than in exposing how "business" creates emotional strangeness.

Boys & ghosts

The gothic also haunts Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone. Young Carlos (Fernando Tielve) is brought to the Santa Lucia School during the height of the Spanish Civil War. He is orphaned and the school itself is in sorry shape-- nearly abandoned, it survives thanks to the dedication of Casares (Federico Luppi) and Carmen (Marisa Paredes), two teachers dedicated to both the school and, under cover, fighting Franco. Aside from the Civil War, the school itself is an emotional, psychological, and physical nightmare. There's a large undetonated bomb in the center of the courtyard, Carlos is tormented by Jamie (Inigo Garces), another orphaned schoolboy, and the groundsman, Jacinth (Eduardo Noriega), is altogether bad news. To make things even worse, there seems to be the ghost of a dead student haunting the school looking for some kind of revenge.

Del Toro masterfully juxtaposes the brooding atmosphere with an incipient homoeroticism and a terrible sense of dread that finally explodes as betrayals build upon betrayals and the film escalate into a sort of anti-Lord of the Flies. In the climax-- a metaphor for Spanish resistance to Franco-- the boys show real team spirit after the mysterious ghost reveals himself. While there's nothing specifically homosexual about the film, a queer atmosphere permeates-- the brooding young-male sexuality, the unspeakableness of the boy-ghost. The collision of the sexual with the political makes The Devil's Backbone creepily enchanting.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com