Well, you would hardly be expecting classic and literate drama for this sequel to the celebrated (notorious?) police thriller of 1992!  In its day, it was a touch shocking with its story of an ice-cold (ice-pick wielding) novelist who seemed to be living out her plots before she wrote them, a daredevil personality with the touch of the nymphomaniac (for both sexes).

It made a star of Sharon Stone and everybody talked about the scene where she crossed her legs.

This time she crosses her legs a lot, but merely as reminders of her signature gesture.  But, she still has murder on her mind.  She is still sexually provocative.  She is still the coldest of personalities.  And Sharon Stone seems to be enjoying herself posing and posturing, lying and telling the truth when it suits her.  Catherine Tramell is still writing novels – and testing out her plots beforehand.  Stone has made her one of the screens baddest girls (and has told the press that she would like to direct Basic Instinct 3).

Which is something of a prelude to saying that I enjoyed it very much.  Of course it is high melodrama, sometimes overwrought, with a glacially vicious leading lady.  But, it is a very smartly written screenplay, one of the best in terms of audiences being able to read into it what they wish because it offers plenty of clues and plenty of ambiguity.  Catherine Tramell could easily have committed the murders.  She had opportunity and motive.  But, then, it could just as possibly have been the detective who is pursuing her obsessively, determined to get her.  And, by the end, as she shrewdly draws the scenario, it could have been the psychiatrist she has been manipulating the whole film.  She makes a very plausible case for this.  So, depending on whom you believe and why, you have your own villain.

The setting is contemporary London, making much of the new buildings in the City of London, with the opening speeding and crash into the Thames at Canary Wharf (just near where I was watching it) and a lurid excursion into Soho at night (just near where the press previews usually screen).

Sharon Stone plays the completely amoral woman, with no conscience and no feelings except for herself.  David Morrissey plays the self-confident psychiatrist who treats her but is really being ‘treated’ by her.  He diagnoses her as a risk-addictive personality, prepared to be more and more daring.  In some ways, he moves towards excessive risk-taking himself.  David Thewliss is the relentless detective and Charlotte Rampling (who might have made an excellent Catherine Tramell in the past) is also a psychiatrist.

Pot-boiling, perhaps, but cleverly done.

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