Jade (1995)

i always harbor an oddball appreciation for the pulp b-movies, especially when they mesh all those classic stereotypes in an awesomely campy manner which is so bold it's almost "epic fail"...jade is one of the cases. most of all, the scriptor joe ezsterhas, also the writer of basic instinct, is the sleazy genius behind the whole picture. it toys with some of the formuli formed in basic instinct: highly educated intelligent but sexually corrupted sexy women of upper class who happens to be a shrink, the uncompromised hard-boiled detective who is more than anxious to set the justice right even thru pervert voyeurism, and priviledged aristocratic men with masochistic preference for the dominatrix-type woman, who gains her pleasure of sex through extreme hard-core acts like bondage and role-playings. and they happen again in SAN FRANSISCO! and ezsterhas adds the morally corrupted lawyer-womanizer into the picture to savour up the delicious rot of jade. in this time, linda fiorention is his fetishized seductive murderess whose super-cunt literally owns the movie!

here are all the fun facts. first of all, the name title jade has a exotic undertone, jade is a dominatrix whore who takes an oriental name to entice her men-prey. and among the remains of the victim, pubic hair is stored within a elegant box made of silver, inscribed with a chinese character of jade. second of all, some of the scenes are deliberately arranged within some chinese festival in frisco's china-town to give the picture an other-worldly feeling, and some of oriental decorations are used as the adorments in those secret rooms for the purpose of illicit sex. (in the script, it's called THE FUCK HOUSE.) if you read raymond chandler's the big sleep, chandler seems to favor associating the oriental exotica with sexual perversions. (bisexuality and promiscuity...the world of pagans always has an aura of emanicipation from puritanical abstinence, to the westerners)...now we witness the modern homage to the metaphors of vintage stereotypes. third of all, one of those most interesting dialogue in the movie is a naked woman in solitude, leaving some desperate message in his answering machine while the man is about to engage in a sexual dalliance with his adulteress: "i'm reaching hysterical blindness, you better be careful, i might give in to one of those uncontrollable urges," which is repeated in the end of the movie by the man as the real murderer is exposed.

david caruso from csi crime scene is still quite dreary as ever while chazz palminteri still remains as the fantastically sleazy typecast of the nasty power-obsessed slick man in b-noir flicks. (king of sleaze!) how about linda florentino? all i could say is that i never knew she was that super-sexy back in the good old 1990s while her husky voice spells out like "i dare you to do me" manifesto which fulfills every frame of picture. and those demure-lady garments seem particularly obscene while you envision all those wild crazy things are done under those conservative customes.

jade is a b-movie-cult homage to noir, just like basic instinct, which is redeemed into a flick due to its strong production backset (which means..they just used all those top-class director, actors and cinematographers,,to make a b-movie), but jade also adapts the chiaroscuro technique to render protagonist's mental states, for example, woman on bed, the dichotomy of light and shadow appears on her face to symbolize something dark is looming within the woman's mind. jade might be a messily, loosely made b-movie, but it's definitely far from boring!

(at least, better than show-girl, another ezsterhas' campy cheer of sleaze.)