It Came From the '90s: Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction

This series looks back at the 1990s and its influence on the generation of people who came of age during the decade.

My cinematic obsession began as a teenager in the 1990s, which coincided with the Golden Age of the erotic thriller—which was often also the neo-noir erotic thriller. It started in the late 1980s and peaked in the early to mid-'90s. Movies like Fatal Attraction (1987), Sea of Love (1989), Body of Evidence (1993), Romeo Is Bleeding (1993), and Malice (1993), to name a few, flooded theaters with a provocative mix of oversexed men and women doing really terrible things for money.

Certainly, Sharon Stone starred in two of the most popular erotic thrillers of that time, Basic Instinct (1992) and Sliver (1993), but when I look back today, one actor seems most symbolic of this era: Linda Fiorentino.

Her performances in movies like Chain of Desire (1992 and pictured above), The Last Seduction (1994), Bodily Harm (1995), and Jade (1995) cemented her status as the ultimate '90s femme fatale, for my money.

Some of those films are entertainingly trashy, but John Dahl's The Last Seduction will always stand as Fiorentino's crowning achievement. As Bridget/Wendy, she's quite simply a force of nature, commanding our attention every minute she's on screen—and, thankfully, she's on screen for most of the movie. Fiorentino infuses the character with a sharply funny sarcasm and a complete disregard for anyone else's feelings but her own. She's seeking money and pleasure, and she'll use the latter to get the former.

The male supporting actors are each very good—Bill Pullman, Peter Berg, and Bill Nunn—but this is Fiorentino's show, and she never fails to captivate. Bridget (who uses the alias Wendy for much of the film) is on the run after stealing her husband's (Pullman) illegally obtained cash. She meets Berg's lonely and self-pitying Mike in small-town Western New York and immediately sees an easy mark, one she can manipulate into disposing of the husband, who's trying to find her and get the money back.

And, goodness, does she know how to manipulate. As a conniving, unscrupulous, overtly sexual being, Fiorentino absolutely destroys the men who get her in way. She takes the femme fatale trope to new, modern heights,. Instead of sly sexual innuendo, she tells us exactly what she's thinking, and in that husky, sultry, nonchalant voice of Fiorentino's it all sounds magnificent.

An early scene in a bar, when she curtly orders a Manhattan, is ignored by the bartender, and then blurts out, "Who's a girl gotta suck around here to get a drink?" is riotously funny. Then there's the time Mike says he can't figure out whether she's a bitch or not and she deadpans absolute certainty, "I am a total fucking bitch." She's tough-talking and completely at ease with her body. She not only seduces Mike, but also viewers who can't ignore the power and majesty of Fiorentino's performance.

Fiorento's breakout work in The Last Seduction brought with it serious Oscar talk. Unfortunately, she and the film weren't eligible because it premiered on HBO before opening in theaters. No matter, it's clear today that she gave one of the truly great performances of 1994 while setting the bar impossibly high for future actresses attempting to play the femme fatale.

When I talk about Linda Fiorentino's '90s work, I always like to joke that her movies carried a warning label on the VHS boxes: “Danger! Flammable contents inside.” It's funny because you can see how it might actually be true. Few actresses ever scorched the screen with such raw, sexual intensity, before or since.

Sadly, Fiorentino has only had a handful of acting credits in the twenty-first century, which is a shame because more Linda Fiorentino is always better than less Linda Fiorentino. That's just a fact.