So Obvious It Hurts

Single White Female. Columbia Pictures (1992).

By R. J. F.

There are a lot of movies that don’t age well, and Single White Female is one of them.

When I originally decided to write about this movie, it was because my memory of it was that it was an interesting thriller. But, it had been so many years since I had watched it, that I needed to watch it again to write this piece. Boy, oh boy, it was a humongous time suck. Don’t get me wrong, the concept is decently interesting. Jane Fonda plays Allie, a woman who suddenly needs a new roommate when her fiancé cheats on her. Enter Hedy, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, a seemingly mousy and meek young lady who moves into Allie’s apartment. It’s not long before Hedy starts modeling her life after Allie’s, and things get freaky. Eventually, Hedy goes on a killing spree when it’s confirmed that she’s cuckoo. This was after she started wearing Allie’s clothes and got the same haircut, as if that wasn’t a giant hint that there wasn’t something quite right with Hedy. All’s well that ends well, though, because Allie kills Hedy in self defense, and the movie ends abruptly.

Here are some thoughts I had while watching SWF. When the movie was released in 1992, it was the number two movie at the box office on its opening weekend. It was deemed a psychological and erotic thriller, which was a popular genre at the time. Other prime examples of these types of films were Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction. I find that when a movie is deemed a psychological and erotic thriller, it’s code for women showing their tits, having sex, and then going bananas over something. That’s not really thrilling; that’s just an average Saturday night in Vegas.

I’m sure when it was in theaters, people were curious about the plot. I mean, how many people can relate to the concept of a roommate from hell? I know a handful of people that moved in with a stranger, or vice versa, and things got uncomfortable quickly. I will also say that Fonda and Leigh were both adequate in the roles that they filled. Fonda, at the time, was having a moment in the early 90s with a handful of decent movies. Her mixture of fear, vulnerability, and toughness as Allie is apparent. Leigh played crazy and conniving convincingly as she pretends to be sweet and innocent while underneath she’s a pot about ready to boil over.

But, my praise stops there. Some of the scenarios were just preposterous. Take, for example, when Hedy goes over to Allie’s cheating fiancé's hotel room in the dead of night and blows him while he’s half asleep. He claims that he thought it was Allie because, at this point in the film, Hedy has the same haircut and is dressed like Allie, so he thought it was his fiancé giving him the old skin flute opera. Of course, Hedy threatens to tell on the fiancé, but decides better and just stabs the guy in the eye with her stiletto when he says he’s going to tell Allie the truth. It was anything but thrilling and erotic because it was such an unoriginal way to kill the fiancé. From the moment the stilettos appear on screen, it’s obvious that they’re going to be used as a weapon.

There’s also this weird scene before the previously mentioned one that was completely unnecessary. Allie follows Hedy to some underground, BDSM sex club; I guess they really wanted to stick it to the audience that this movie was supposed to be erotic. The whole scene seemed out of place because Allie had already figured out that Hedy was up to no good trying to impersonate her. Was it really a necessary scene to have Allie walk around this seedy place? No, but I guess that’s how it goes in an erotic thriller.

The movie really escalates in the last 30 minutes. It almost felt like the director and editor spent too much time in the beginning of the film trying to build up to what would be Hedy’s unraveling. Legitimately, the last 30 minutes sees Hedy beat up Allie’s upstairs neighbor/friend and leave him for dead, kill the fiancé, kill Allie’s boss, almost kill Allie, and then get killed. If you want to know what the movie is about, just fast forward to the last 30 minutes and you can figure it out.

That’s the thing with these types of movies, they’re not built to last. When they’re popular, it’s most likely because there are other movies in the same vein that everyone is going to see. SWF doesn’t stand the test of time because, by now, it’s been said, done, and remade for the masses many times over. But, hey, at least there’s a message in it about letting a stranger move in.