Word: courtesans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...them all to ruin--the philandering father (Hugh Laurie), the spoiled daughter (Kelly MacDonald), the clueless son (Toby Stephens) and, for good measure, a self-absorbed young sculptor (Aden Young) who takes her generosity for granted, not realizing that she loves him. She spares only Elisabeth Shue's actress-courtesan, partly because she too is socially unacceptable, partly because she is so useful as the seductress Bette needs to bring off her schemes...
Catherine McCormack delivers a refreshing, funny and inspired performance in Marshal Herskovitz's new period piece. As Veronica Franco, a lower-class beautiful girl turned high-class court prostitute, McCormack leads a well-assembled cast in this slightly flawed--yet worth seeing--film about life as a courtesan in 16th century Venice. Prefaced by both opening and closing textual summations, the film clearly advances a social agenda--in this respect, it slides by with an average grade. The cleverness of the rest of its script and the excellence of the acting, however, save Dangerous Beauty and make it shine. Marc...
Catherine McCormack delivers a refreshing, funny and inspired performance in Marshal Herskovitz's new period piece. As Veronica Franco, a lower-class beautiful girl turned high-class court prostitute, McCormack leads a well-assembled cast in this slightly flawed--yet worth-seeing--film about life as a courtesan in 16th century Venice. Prefaced by both opening and closing textual summations, the film clearly advances a social agenda--in this respect, it slides by with an average grade. The cleverness of the rest of its script and the excellence of the acting, however, save Dangerous Beauty and makes it shine. --Marc...
...most vividly expressive personalities ever to take an opera-house curtain call. Appearing this fall in the Met's production of Manon, she bewitched audiences and critics alike with her compelling portrayal of the title character, a teenage girl who escapes from a convent, sets up shop as a courtesan, jilts her wealthy lover, seduces a priest and cuts a wide swath through Parisian high society before crashing and burning in the fifth act. It isn't exactly typecasting, she confesses with an all-American grin, but it's a welcome change of pace from the "pedestal-type women...
...last millennium, the Japanese courtesan Sei Shonagon wrote The Pillow Book, which survives as a masterpiece of erotic and political intrigue. A thousand years later, the English filmmaker Peter Greenaway (Drowning by Numbers, The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover) has created a severe, rhapsodic fable about body painting--about a woman's desire to make of herself a living work of erotic...