Likely unavoidable after Whore (1991). Here Ken Russell has Kathleen Turner play a woman divided between her day job of designing women's sportswear and her evenings as a working girl who'll do whatever's required by the denizens of L.A. She's strives to be the best in both roles. The script by Barry Sandler is disjointed, lurid, clunky and generally poor, especially in how it draws Anthony Perkins's god botherer who somehow identifies with her. The scenes from a marriage (between John Laughlin and Annie Potts (Bo Peep in the Toy Storys from 1995 onwards)) are boring, tepid reworkings of Rabbit, Run (1970), until Perkins gets his cue. The camerawork lacks the necessary realism, and the sets etc. are too cheap and nasty, for it to work as a time capsule. In a couple of sittings due to mystification.
Roger Ebert: one-and-a-half stars. Silly. Severely cut to fit into an R rating. Janet Maslin. Extremely tawdry. The bulk indeed has a "flat, joyless tone" which is annoying as the first time we encounter Turner (with a john) is quite funny.
