Naked Jane

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Film: B-

 

 

After all this time, women on film is still too marginalized for its own good and there is a misogynist mentality that any such point of view is only worthy of the Lifetime Network.  Considering how lightweight that network is, you can see a much-needed alternate is long overdue.  Linda Kandel’s Naked Jane (1994) tries to deal with the mature adult desires of the title character (Renee Stahl) wants to write a book, but transcribes other’s school work and struggling with whether to let a man into her life or if that would stop her from reaching her goals.

 

About a third of the way through the film, it takes off in a rare direction of how she deals with Matthew, an artist himself who is as instantly interested.  This goes into territory we hardly ever see, and if it was not so occurrently rough in doing this, would have received even more attention from the few insightful critics left in the media.  The sequences are not Melodramatic or romantic in a silly way, but a mature woman’s quest for happiness with a man and a career that never betrays the honesty it is often successful at pulling off.  Kandel wrote the script and has really thought out things we have not seen before and how to show them on film about women.  There was nothing pretentious about it either, which makes it a pleasure to watch.

 

The letterboxed 1.85 X 1 image shot by cinematographer Yoshi Hosoya has problems with its darker shots and a softness in the image throughout.  The color is also slightly dull, but several monochrome scenes are not bad.  The few semi-nude scenes are shot with exceptional thought.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has no Pro Logic surrounds to speak of, but is clear enough for a recent production and was mixed on a Macintosh computer.  Steve Gregoropoulos’ music is not bad either, performed by W.A.C.O and joined by smart choices in hit records.  The only extras include 8 film-related stills in frame-by-frame and a longer text section on how the film came to be, though I bet there was more to say.

 

Kandel followed up with Mascara (1999), a film we have heard of that starred Ione Skye (Say Anything) which we can’t wait to check out.  There is room for Kandel to delve further into human sexuality and if she keeps working at it, that next breakthrough should be great.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo