Bad Influence (1990) +/-

A big80s neo-noir exploration of the perils of masculine intimacy. The scenario is a Brat Pack Fight Club: James Spader (I'll dispense with character names as the characters are subsumed within the b-list celebrity personae of their enactors) is a striving finance guy in LA who's on the verge of his first midlife crisis as he approaches his 30th birthday. He's freaking out about turning 30, terrified of his über-yuppie wife (Marcia Cross, looking healthy and not skinny-brittle), and mortified that he's becoming a patsy at work as he and an especially skeevy colleague are being considered for an important promotion. Enter Rob Lowe, a confident enigma who -- after rescuing Spader from a strange bar fight -- seems to know the answer to every one of Spader's existential questions. The two begin a tempestuous friendship/partnership, in which Lowe "schools" Spader on how to get what he wants -- professionally, sexually, and personally. Of course, along the way, Lowe reveals himself to be something of a sociopath and Spader finds himself totally enmeshed in all kinds of sticky problems (including dead bodies). The rest of the film tracks Spader's anxiety as he tries to outwit/outplay/outlast Lowe in their noirish "game" of cat-mouse. The film is, in many ways, a hoot. The landscape of Los Angeles (if I am recalling things correctly, this film is referenced repeatedly in LA Plays Itself) acts as a curiously depopulated, dystopic urban landscape. There's some racial panic, a lot of gender panic, and a good deal of panicked acting to keep things entertaining. What I found most compelling about the film is that it operates as a masculine courtship narrative. Spader's anxieties about living the life scripted for him (good job, good marriage, etc) collide with the two contrasting models of masculine intimacy: the relationship he has with his brother, which is full of affection and trust but doesn't DO anything to make his life better; and the thrilling contrast of the relationship Spader discovers with Lowe. They didn't have the word in 1990, but when Spader develops a "mancrush" on Lowe, his life changes immediately. Through Lowe's Alex, Spader's Michael is reintroduced to the thrill of discovering new aspects of himself, as well as the potential for unknown pleasures and excitements. Yet, at the same time, what Lowe and Spader have together is an intrinsically incriminating intimacy. Spader's Michael could, potentially, get in a lot of trouble if any of this goodtimes with Lowe's Alex are discovered. In some ways, I might argue that Bad Influence follows what we might call a "down-low" narrative, in which the exhilaration and danger found through macho flirtations and intimacies are counterposed to the respectably masculine responsibilities of public life. Basically, once Spader's Michael "falls in" with Lowe's Alex (and especially after they see each other having sex and start wearing each other's clothes), the threat to Spader's Michael is that his new secret life might be discovered. In only the most oblique, but nonetheless most compelling ways, it's a "closet" thriller, in which the narrative tensions are derived from the threat of intimate revelation. Spader's Michael is terrified that his private actions with Lowe's Alex will be publicly revealed, that the depth of the intimacy of his relationship with Lowe's Alex will not be explainable. This is also why narratives like Fight Club and Strangers on a Train always operate from a different core charge than, say, comparable surrogation narratives centering around women. In, say, Single White Female or The Hand That Rocks The Cradle or Rebecca, the threat is of a kind of erasure, where the ominous figure (either the new friend or the absent predecessor) stealthily overtake the life of the central character, until she must fight back and protect her own integrity/personhood. In Fight Club or Strangers on a Train or Bad Influence, the threat embodied by the ominous new character is not so much about identity dissolution/displacement but more about the threat of revealing a core truth about the male protagonist. He's consented to reveal his true desires to this other man, and now this other man can use that "secret" to compel him to do terrible things. They're both queer narrative structures, but distinct in gendered terms. And that's what I think I enjoyed about Bad Influence, seeing Rob Lowe as the embodiment of the perils of masculine temptation. And even though Lowe is often horribly not good in certain moments (the accents, puh-leeze), he's great on the whole: the camera adores his embodiment of pretty, giddy dissipation and he inhabits the character with a delightfully thoughtless glee. He's a delight to watch here, both because he's so good and because he's so bad. Spader's fine, and haunting imagery punctuates the film. (Terrorizing the donut shop man while Spader in the bunny mask hops around is just gross, and so early90s urban dystopia.) Not a great, or even good, film -- just fabulous trashy fun.