Sophia's Cinematic Inspirations

This is another movie I saw way younger than anyone would expect. I think I was in like fourth grade when this movie was being shown on cable. Even back then, I was a night owl, sleeping only 4-5 hours a night, and it was common for me to stay up long after my parents had gone to sleep, reading and watching late night movies on the pay stations long after all the other stations were showing nothing but infomercials. I remember being so fascinated with the female lead in this movie, and even though I missed out on the subtleties and nuances of the plot, I definitely processed the gist-- Dani is a woman who is so intelligent and beautiful that men want her so badly, if they can't have her, they go literally insane.

Jarvis is a writer who is struggling for inspiration. His new next door neighbor is a sexy young actress, who is so beautiful, Jarvis finds himself becoming increasingly obsessed with her. He eavesdrops on her arguments with her boyfriend, he peeps in her window, and eventually, he awkwardly introduces himself to her.

Danielle is confident, brilliant, and seductive. She dreams of becoming a famous actress, and she explains upfront that she will do whatever it takes. Says Dani: "I want to win. I wanna act until my heart stops beating, and I'm going to do anything I have to in order to get that... ANYTHING". Inspired by Dani, Jarvis starts to write a new script, centered around a character based on her.

Dani is a sexual virtuoso, and Jarvis's life is turned upside down by her aggressive carnality. In one memorable scene, Dani arrives with a bag full of ropes and proceed to tie Jarvis to the bed. He nervously comments,"This is very... energizing. You should get aroused more often." She tauntingly replies,"Be a good boy and I'll see what I can do". She then teasingly kisses all over his body, until finally, as he gets soo close and is begging for her touch,--- she stops. Completely. She stands up and says,"Good night, Jarvis". He pathetically whines,"What are you doing??". "I'm going home," she says. She later reveals that the knots she used were slip-knots-- he could have gotten out whenever he wanted, but he didn't try. She mockingly muses,"Some boys just like to be tied up."

But when he won't let her see his work, Dani begins to deny him the opportunity to be with her. She torments him by visibly dating other men. She stops coming over. Inevitably, Jarvis breaks down and begs her to read his story. When he obeys, she rewards him with more pleasure. With Jarvis totally addicted, Dani starts reviewing his work page by page, making changes to the script to "improve" it. Soon the script is completed, and Hollywood is begging to make it into a movie.

Jarvis, deluded into trusting Dani, is touched by finally having someone who cares about him and his work. And of course, he's utterly in love with Dani. So he is shocked when he finds out that Dani is going to play the female lead in the movie. It seems her suggestions to improve the script, which Jarvis thought were offered out of love, in fact intended to make the character more and more like Dani-- so that Dani would be the only actress who could fill the role. Furthermore, Jarvis discovers that Dani has seduced the movie's director-- the director became so obsessed with Dani that he offered her the part.

It's then that Jarvis realizes the truth... Dani doesn't love him-- she never has. She just used him.

Jarvis confronts Dani with her "cheating" on him. Instead of denying it, she tortures him-- telling him sexual details about the other man, bragging about the director's cock, and intentionally driving Jarvis to the point of a breakdown. In a fit of pain, Jarvis smacks Dani across the face-- but rather than recoiling in terror, Dani responds powerfully-- she smiles at the blow, looks Jarvis right in the eye, and says "That was nice... how about another?". In doing so, she robs Jarvis of any power he had-- even his power to physically hurt her has been ripped from him.

Soon, Dani's machinations drive Jarvis to the very brink of insanity. A timid writer is transformed into a raving lunatic. Fun stuff.

I think I was in fourth or fifth grade when I first watched this film. My best friend was spending the night, and it was being shown on Cinemax. My friend was a bit scared by the film-- i.e. she was a normal and boring kid. I, on the other hand, was completely amazed by it. As an adult, I only remembered bits and pieces of the film, but I did recall that the femme fatale was able to totally destroy anyone who got in her path. I believe that during my initial viewing, circa age 11, I started watching the film halfway into it, so I never actually knew what it was called. I only rediscovered it when I put Josh to work doing research for this site.

When you're a girl growing up in Western society, it's hard to find good role models. Most are pathetic, helpless princesses who exist just to be saved by a leading man. Female heroes are beautiful, innocent, helpless, and their greatest aspiration is to be loved by a male. Look at the female protagonists of any Disney film: Ariel in The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, etc. On the other hand, the villains are ugly, and their highest aspiration is to be as beautiful as the protagonists. Utter garbage.

So it was only natural that I gravitated towards characters in adult films who were more "me". And even though I only saw her once when I was young, Mona Demarkov was one of my heroes.

Mona is a dangerous Mafia hit woman. This character is what Angelina Jolie _should_ have been in Mr & Mrs Smith (a movie I found completely boring and without redeeming value). Mona isn't a female version of a cookie-cutter action hero, but rather, her most dangerous traits are her intelligence and her beauty. She drives men insane. People who are paid to kill her wind up working for her. She crushes people's lives and they thank her for it.

Jack is a low-ranking, underpaid cop, with a boring life. He has a wife he's bored with, a girlfriend on the side he's also bored with. He hates his life.

Then one day, Jack gets an assignment to transport a prisoner. He meets Mona Demarkov-- a stunning Russian woman who was arrested for being a Mafia assassin. She is handcuffed and locked in the back of his car-- but he is completely mesmerized by her-- unable to stop looking at her in the rear view mirror. He tries to establish himself as the dominant one-- he turns to her and scoffs,"So you're the big hoodlum, huh? Personally... I don't see it." Mona smiles back at him ominously and replies,"Keep looking'."

They finally arrive at the hotel where he's supposed to rendezvous with the federal agents. He checks into a room, and Jack and his prisoner await the arrival of the feds. Everything is going as planned in this routine assignment, except for the fact that Mona is stunning and deadly.

Her seduction starts slowly. She provocatively crosses her legs, exposing her stockings and hinting at the possibility of seeing more. Jack's eyes are glued to her. He practically drools. And then she insults him for taking her bait-- "It's not nice to stare," she chastises him. Jack looks embarrassed.

Then Mona, sensing Jack's greed, begins musing about money. She talks about what it's like to hold hundreds of thousands of dollars in your hand. "It's better than sex," she says. This breaks down his last vestige of willpower. He approaches her and begins caressing her thighs. She aggressively pushes him to the floor and climbs atop him. Jack knows she's just looking for an opportunity to grab his gun, but he keeps groping and kissing her all the same. Sitting atop him, she removes her blouse as the cop stares on in a frenzied state of lust.

Suddenly, there is a knock at the door, and an entire contingent of federal agents come into the room. Jack tries to get up, but Mona pins him to the floor. She howls with laughter as Jack flails around helplessly beneath her, utterly unable to conceal that he has been seduced by his prisoner. The federal agents laugh at Jack, who is deeply embarrassed, caught literally with his pants down. As the other agents finally pull Mona away from a helpless Jack, she cackles with joy at Jack's utter humiliation.

Jack leaves and tries to put Mona Demarkov out of his head. But he finds he's growing obsessed with her. He has nightmares about her. When he makes love to his wife, he imagines he's with Mona. Desperate for more details, Jack goes to meet with the cop who replaced him as Mona's guard. The cop is practically in tears-- having been deeply traumatized. Mona stole his gun, pointed it right in his face, and would have killed him if it weren't for the intervention of the federal agents. Mona escaped-- now the cop's career is ruined-- he's being demoted, possibly fired. Mona has ruined another life.

After hearing his friend's tale of humiliation, Jack is even more obsessed with Mona. Desperate for more details, Jack breaks into the police records office and steals a copy of Mona's police record. He learns that several years earlier, an FBI agent was assigned to perform surveillance on Mona Demarkov. For reasons the FBI can't explain, the agent became more and more obsessed with Mona. He started suffering from depression, then had a psychotic breakdown. Ultimately, the agent committed suicide. Another life taken by Mona Demarkov

One day, Jack gets a phone call out of the blue. It's Mona. She wants to meet him. Jack's a cop who should arrest her. On the other hand, a mob boss has offered Jack a large sum of money to kill Mona. But of course, Jack doesn't arrest her or kill her. Mona isn't even scared. Instead, he helps Mona fake her death. When he meets with her to discuss the plan, Mona prances around in skimpy clothes, knowing her body protects her from a man who's been paid to kill her.

Once he's faked Mona's death, she no longer needs him. She takes a wire and begins to strangle Jack. As he gasps for breath, nearly dead, Mona coos and moans with erotic pleasure at Jack's imminent death. When Jack breaks free from the wire around his neck, Mona tries to strangle him with her legs. Jack escapes, but Mona isn't through destroying him. Jack, trying to kill Mona, tracks down where Mona lives, breaks into the building, and shoots at a silhouette of a woman. But the woman isn't Mona-- it's someone wearing a wig and clothes to resemble Mona. Jack runs to examine who it is he has just killed. In horror, he realizes it's Sheri, his cocktail waitress girlfriend. Mona has kidnapped her, and tricked Jack into murdering his own girlfriend.

Jack is kidnapped and beaten unconscious. He wakes up handcuffed to a bed. Mona hovers over him, and even though she's destroyed him-- he still wants her. She hovers above him, her lips inches away from his, as he strains against his bonds to try to kiss her-- only to have her pull back at the last second. Soon, Jack is back as Mona's lapdog, doing her bidding, like always.

But of course, eventually Jack outlives his usefulness and Mona destroys him. "I never liked you, Jack. You're filth." Then she goes in for the psychological kill. "Not even when I screwed you, you poor, stupid fuck. It made me sick." Jack protests,"You went crazy during sex, you said you loved it". She retorts,"Never. I lied. You never got to me, not for a minute. You're a dry fuck, Jack, that's what you are". After this, Jack as a coherent ego is basically destroyed. Her words essentially murder him, reduce him to a psychotic state of chasing ghosts.

Have you ever noticed that there's NOTHING you can say to a man that will hurt him more than telling him he was boring in bed? Tell him you don't love him anymore-- he'll cry, but he'll survive. Tell him you cheated on him-- he'll accept that if that's the price of being near you. But tell him he failed to please you-- tell him that he never made you come-- and it destroys him. On some deep, evolutionary, existential level, it devastates him. After all, it seems to me that at least 95% of men don't have sex for their own physical pleasure. If it was just their own physical pleasure they wanted, well, they could easily and conveniently get that from a hand or a whore. But men don't want that. Instead, they need to make a woman happy. They'll jump through hoop after hoop, pay any sum, endure any pain-- all for the slimmest chance to truly please a powerful woman.