User Reviews

Nothing new in this thriller which finds disturbed, possessive 'Hedra' (Jennifer Jason Leigh) moving in with career girl 'Alison' (Bridget Fonda), who has recently separated from her boyfriend.

Barbet Schroeder creates his own style in a film which (with two effective lead performances) manages to elicit tension, even if it is not full of surprises. The plot line is not unlike that of the recent "Poison Ivy", and the style is a little akin to "Basic Instinct". However, "Single White Female" is a definite improvement on both of these films, though it is not as good as some other thrillers of late. Unnerving, but never outstanding.

Saturday, October 10, 1992 - Knox District Centre

If I didn't know this was written by a man I'd swear it was written by a woman because it's got the female interactional style down pat. Don't blame me for this observation. It's straight out of Deborah Tannen, your major feminist. We have a friendship between two women, one very plain (Jennifer Jason Lee) with an ugly name, Hedra, and the other glamorous (Bridget Fonda) and with a suitably post-modern name, Allyson ("Ally"). (The plain one is nurturing and definitely non-threatening to the glamorous one.) They eat ice cream cones together, like the same movies. They swap presents. When one is upset, the other offers to make tea. And not just tea. CHAMOMILE TEA. Can you imagine John Wayne delivering Fonda's line -- "I'll make some tea. Chamomile. And then we can TALK." No, you can't imagine John Wayne ever uttering such a suggestion. Don't kid yourself. "Talkin' words is fer wimmin."

Then the relationship begins to get a little twisted. Lee begins to delete phone messages from Fonda's estranged boyfriend, Sam. They begin going through each others' closets, drawers, secret shoeboxes, and other forbidden information preserves. There are intrigues, sexual and otherwise. Lee adopts Fonda's style of grooming and actually looks like her, which displeases Fonda and fools Fonda's boyfriend Sam. Lee murders a puppy. Then she evidently kills Graham, the gay upstairs neighbor, gives Sam an intraorbital prefrontal lobotomy with a stiletto heel, and puts two or three holes through the face of Fonda's libidinous scuzzbag of a boss. Lee, a complete fruitcake by now, ties Fonda to a chair with duct tape from which Fonda tries desperately to escape, only to find, when successful, that she is pursued by a deranged Lee down to the basement of the huge apartment building. It is all supposed to have something to do with Lee's twin sister who died at nine, but that's psychobabble.

I want to get back to Graham, the gay upstairs neighbor. He has a habit of listening to the conversations downstairs through the grating of a heater. (Cf., the same device in "The Horse Soldiers.") This prompted me to wonder what the hell kind heaters they have in this apartment building. But that's not what I wanted to get back to Graham for. I wanted to get back to him because of what happens to him about two-thirds of the way through. He's discovered something about Lee and when he confronts her in his apartment, she loses it, jabs him in the stomach with the iron prop bar from the door, then bashes his head in -- twice.

The end of Graham, right? He is incommunicado and unable to help Fonda when things get bad for her because, after all, he's somewhat dead and must by now have assumed room temperature. Well, not exactly, because near the end we see that Lee has stashed his body under water in his own bathtub, his dead cat perched placidly on his chest.

Graham has been feeling like this for hours. And yet, when Fonda is really IN EXTREMIS, and Lee is about to plug her with an automatic, Graham, ever the unflappable, ever the Mad Monk, springs to life, jumps out of the bathtub and temporarily disables Lee. And he's not even DRIPPING.

The first two thirds of the movie are pretty well done. (I bought the DVD.) Nice photography and good performances from the two leads. The men are incompetent nincompoops as always, never there when you need them, and are easily forgotten. But the intricacy of the relationship between Fonda and Lee is nicely rendered. Lee has the splashier role and makes the most of it. She is thoroughly deglamorized to emphasize the contrast between her and Fonda, although to be sure Fonda can be made to look a little crummy too if the role calls for it.

Barbet Schroeder, the director, certainly knows where the put the camera. Alas, he shrugs and throws away the story at the slasher climax. Just when someone is doing something a bit naughty, a figure appears in the background and looks over her shoulder. Fonda is hiding in an air vent from Lee, who is pursuing her with one of those lethal stevedore cargo-lifting hooks that can be found in every basement. Lee is creeping around, demented, eager to kill. Nevertheless, Fonda is so frightened of a mouse that she betrays her location.

The film does have a good deal of redeeming social value though, in that it contains ample nudity and sex in various forms that should be familiar to any cultivated viewer.

It's all quite impossible to take seriously but it is engaging.

I have never seen such trite in my life! The film, has no solid storyline and is amazingly awful. Bridget Fonda is gorgeous but i think this film totally undermined her, her acting performances were not projected as like a true actors would and god! It is just RUBBISH! The way the brunette woman killed Bridget Fonda's fiancée, by accidentally throwing the heel of a silver stiletto shoe in his eye, just cracked me up. This film cannot be of the thriller genre more of the comedy genre. The emotions that were meant to have been portrayed were not such as when Fonda found out her fiancée had died, what did she do? Just whimper! Show some emotion, please! The ending, oh my god! What an awful ending, the ending could have either been explained in a lot more detail or just shot differently, it would have made all the more difference, trust me. If they could just go back to the storyboards and elaborate on the shot angles, this film would be a little better.

I first saw this in the cinema many years ago and enjoyed it enough to buy it when it came out on video. While I don't rate it as highly as when I first saw it I still think it is a good film, mainly due to the quality of the two lead actresses, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh who seems to be excellent in everything I've seen her in.

Bridget Fonda plays Allison Jones who learns that her fiancé has cheated on her with his ex-wife. She ends the relationship but doesn't want to live alone so puts an advert in the newspaper for a flatmate. Out of the applicants she chooses Hedra 'Hedy' Carlson a mousy girl played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, at first she seems like the ideal choice but things start to go wrong when it appears that Allie and her fiancé are getting back together. Hedy is determined to keep them apart, at the same time she starts to dress like Allie and even changes her hair style and colour to match. Things soon spiral out of control leading to a violent confrontation between Allie and Hedy. There is also a sub-plot about Allie's work involving a client who sexually harasses her then fails to pay for her services.

Even though I ticked the "Contains Spoilers" box I have tried to keep them to a minimum as a thriller won't be very thrilling if you know too much. As mentioned before, the acting is good and the plot is fairly plausible till the climax when it becomes a fairly standard confrontation between the two protagonists. There isn't too much violence and what there is isn't all that graphic, there is however a fair amount of sexual content and nudity which I suppose some viewers might feel uncomfortable with.

It's hard to believe Single White Female was released 30 years ago. It's timeless and more relevant than ever with share accommodation and unstable tenants like the SWF in this movie convincingly played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, the daughter of the late Vic Morrow.

Single White Female deserves a reboot, perhaps a limited run series, to explore psychotic neighbors and tenants in this social media world.

"Single White Female" is a psychological thriller in which obsession, insanity and murder figure strongly. Its mood is dark and threatening and its shadowy interiors and exaggerated camera angles make the atmosphere even more unsettling. The story, which is based on John Lutz's novel called "SWF Seeks Same", is intriguing right from the start and builds up the tension so effectively that it becomes totally engrossing. It's suspenseful, edgy and visually strong and features a couple of characters whose interaction ultimately puts both their lives in danger.

Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda) is a young New York City software designer who throws her live-in lover called Sam (Steven Weber) out of their apartment when she discovers that he recently cheated on her with his ex-wife. Allie doesn't relish the idea of living alone and so advertises for a roommate to share the cost of her large Manhattan apartment. After receiving numerous expressions of interest, Allie spontaneously decides to invite the rather withdrawn-looking Hedy Carlson (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to move in.

Hedy and Allie soon become good friends but Allie gradually starts to become unnerved by some of Hedy's behaviour. Sam then tries to reconcile with Allie but Hedy intercepts and hides his letter and erases the messages that he leaves on the telephone answering machine. Later, when Sam seems to have been accepted back by Allie, Hedy tries to discredit him by killing Allie's dog and making it appear that he was responsible. Things then get worse for Allie when Hedy copies her hairstyle and taste in clothes so closely that the two women look like doubles.

The discomfort and anger that Allie experiences as a result of Hedy's changed appearance becomes even more intense when she discovers that her roommate had lied about her past and her identity and had also recently started to visit nightclubs where she adopted Allie's identity. Allie then becomes desperate to get rid of her roommate but when Hedy finds out, she becomes increasingly psychotic and degenerates into blackmail, hostage taking and murder before her rampage is finally brought to a halt.

Hedy's identical twin had died in childhood and the lack of completeness that she'd felt through the rest of her life was at the root of her obsession with Allie and her need to be her "twin". She carried a profound sense of guilt about her secret past and this clearly played a part in her insanity. Jennifer Jason Leigh is exceptional as this woman who not only uses three different identities but also goes through some extraordinary and extreme behavioural changes. The fact that she portrays these so convincingly is very impressive and worthy of high praise.

Allie is confident and smart but also vulnerable and it was possibly Hedy's neediness that registered with Allie and made her seem to be a suitable potential roommate. Allie also has the misfortune to be badly abused by everyone around her from her unfaithful boyfriend, to a client who sexually assaults her and even a trusted neighbour who'd regularly been listening in to her most intimate conversations. Bridget Fonda is remarkably subtle and believable in the way that she conveys the various complexities of Allie's character.

The quality of the acting in this movie is consistently good but the outstanding supporting performance comes from Stephen Tobolowsky who is disgustingly smug and sleazy as Allie's business client who tries to exploit her financially and sexually.

This film was such a wasted few hours of my life. The plot was absolutely terrible. An obsessive lesbian-esquire stalker girl who destroys her flatmates life? To begin with, the whole my fiancé cheated with his ex-wife beginning was terrible. You pray and pray for her to just dump him, because honestly, why would you take such scum back? and then she does? Well, I honestly had no sympathy for her after that. The back story for Leighs character was weak, and why she would choose weak and pathetic Fonda's character to obsess over, I really don't know. I cheered when Fonda's fiancé was killed, and ended up hating both Leigh and Fonda's pitiful characters. The film was far too focused on sex, and it was far too male orientated erotica. To sum up, the film was poorly executed, think made for TV movie.