Bette Gordon's independent psychological thriller, written by feminist superheroine Kathy Acker, is a stunning noir experiment set in the sex shops of 1983 Times Square. A signifcant film about sexual difference, desire, and gaze. Watch it. And be sure to pay attention to the scenery of 1983 Times Square. It's a different world, aeons ago.

I have a soft spot for Variety, mainly because I associate it with Working Girls, Lizzie Borden's groundbreaking 1986 sex-drama that easily places in my Top 100 list of all time. The projects share a lot of the same sensibilities, some of the same cast and crew, and an authentic NYC downtown vibe that's almost documentary in its rendering. The dialog is whip-smart, the acting relatively free from affectation, and the characters non-airbrushed and compelling.The premise for Variety is quite ambitious and even daunting. Christine (portrayed with a visceral honesty by Sandy McLeod) is a somewhat sheltered, vaguely aimless young woman trying to make her mark in NYC. It's unclear how, only that a lot of her friends are artists --- Nan Goldin, for one, who gets her a job as a ticket taker at the very real (at the time) Variety Photoplay porn theater. For the first third of the film, McLeod breaks our heart and keeps our attention, even when doing something as seemingly mundane as pacing around her dump of an apartment, chain-smoking and listening to the messages on her PhoneMate. Her admitted lack of a center or any real goal sucks her into this job, at first intriguing her, then obsessing her to the point where it threatens to devour, rather than fill her time. She becomes attenuated to every sexual nuance, a one-woman erotic red-alert sensor that both frees her and imprisons her.This obsession is embodied in her fascination with one of the theater's patrons, the slightly smarmy Louie, a low-level Mafia type played by Richard Davidson, who portrayed a similar character in Working Girls. Unfortunately, Variety loses a lot of people at this point.The second third of the film, and a good part of the last third, consist of Christine stalking Louie around New York, as his whereabouts seem to coincide with info that her reporter boyfriend (a very young Will Patton) has disclosed to her. I've heard Variety referred to as an anti-noir in these segments, since it almost turns itself into a neon-drenched mini-mystery here. Unfortunately it's a bit too heavy on the Anti: for about 30-35 minutes of the film, not much "happens" on-screen. It's virtually nothing but tracking shots of Christine following Louie. And following. And following. While the photography is always interesting and sometimes quite beautiful to watch, it's off-putting and will try many people's patience. Add to that the stiff narratives Christine spouts, trance-like, to her boyfriend, that read a bit too much like screenwriter Kathy Acker's erotic play-by-plays (at their most self-conscious), and Variety is guaranteed to lose all but the most hardcore art crowd.I really get what Gordon was after here, feminism-wise, and I think it showed great daring to do so without portraying Christine as a little-girl-victim. I just wish it gave us something a bit more to chew on regarding Christine's spiral and her journey through it.

The combination of Kathy Acker as writer and Bette Gordon as director should have signaled a potent brew, but sadly what we get here is a brilliant idea cut down savagely by the film's low-budget budget. Tracing the seedy, crime-ridden porn theater world of Times Square in the early 80s from a what was a post-feminist perspective should have pushed the boundaries of what could be explored in feminist cinema but here the effect is to disengage the viewer from the convoluted action. Every technical aspect from the sound to the acting feels shabby and weak and frankly underwhelming but there is an underground post-Factory (Warhol not WalMart) passion at work that just about saves this oddity. Acker's polemical script presents feminist intervention/investment in the patriarchal world of pornography with some gusto and ambiguity at times but eventually the direction dilutes itself in a haze of revisionist sexual politics, thanks to the inconsequential scripting and unfocused lensing.

There is no doubt that feminism is what holds this movie together.Bette Gordon made this movie in the height of the feminist debate over pornography. She doesn't endorse or condemn porn in this movie."Variety" depicts a woman who uses porn as a tool of self-exploration.The movie is also a spoof of film noir. Gordon has fun with the genre by changing the sex of the main character to female. She lets her heroine play the amateur sleuth, which is traditionally a male character.Unlike many genre movies in which women are terrorized, there is no victim in "Variety." Gordon contends that pornography doesn't necessarily make women victims. It is so refreshing that Gordon never puts her heroine at the site of male violence.Gordon succeeds in keeping the viewer in suspense till the very end of the movie.