Body of Evidence (1993)
Madonna plays Rebecca Carlson, a woman accused of killing a vulnerable man through wild sexual games when she found out she was in line for $8m from his will. Defence attorney Willem Dafoe vows to get her off (The charges... God you lot have dirty minds) but ends up in a dangerous affair with her. (Oh... maybe you don't).
Nowhere near as bad as the critics would suggest, Body of Evidence was just one of a whole wave of erotic thrillers riding on the coat tails of 1987's Fatal Attraction. However it's clearly gains it's inspiration from early Film Noir and 1981's Body Heat with it's atmospheric use of light and shade and waterfront locations.
Madonna, who was widely derided at the time for the film, (She was for everything she did that had anything to do with sex, be it her Sex book or her 1992 Erotica album) really isn't bad at all, i'd even suggest her performance is quite restrained. In fact the film as a whole is quite restrained. Certainly a couple of the sex scenes are famous or indeed infamous (Hello dripping wax and car bonnet) but they really don't seem in the least subversive in the 2020's. In fact during the trial scenes the courts are repeatedly cleared as 'wild' sex acts are spoken about except they really aren't that wild at all, normal you might say in the here and now.
The cast is quite impressive too. Along with Dafoe and Madonna there's strong support from Joe Mantegna (I'm sorry but i only hear Fat Tony whenever he speaks), Anne Archer, Julianne Moore, Jurgen Prochnow and Frank Langella, who together make the daft plot appear perfectly reasonable.
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