A frustrating picture to say the least, ‘Red Lips’ is a mid 90s SOV flick that has a kernal of a good idea at its heart, that gets consistantly undermined by excessive needless nudity, simulated sex scenes and the limitations of the medium of SOV.
The plot follows Caroline, a down on her luck grunge head whos resorted to donating blood to make ends meet. One fateful day however, while lamenting how much she’s been payed for this months pull, the doctor working at the center mentions that her blood grouping is unique and that, if she wants to make up to $100 a day, theres a secret experiment that Caroline can undertake. though…it’s strictly off the record.
Naturally, she agrees. But quickly realises that she’s let herself in for more than she’s bargained for, when the experimental serum she’s been injected with completely rewrites her biology, making her desperately and hopelessly addicted to blood. without it, she becomes frail and seizes up. and she has to feast AT LEAST once a day to avoid that.
After picking off a couple of folks in random motels, and a couple of sex workers. Caroline eventually meets up with Lisa (Michelle Baur) an older woman recently out of a toxic lesbian relationship looking to find some stability, and the pair end up forming an rather unlikely alliance…but…as is the case with these things, its very rarely that easy…and VERY rarely a happy ending…
And I think my opening sentiments pretty much sum up my thoughts on the film about as well as I can put it. The base plot here is really, honestly pretty decent. It reminded me a little bit of ‘Thelma and Louise’ but with a distinctly supernatural/horror edge. and I think had it been played out like that (I.E: Two women slowly fall into a lesbian relationship by virtue of their worlds outside of the relationship collapsing in on them, leading to them going on the run and doing what they need to to survive) it VERY likely would have been SO much more engaging a watch than it is…
Unfortunately; because this is an SOV movie, and its gotta do EVERYTHING to sell. it means every other scene has our characters undressing, having sex or flirting pretty needlessly. Which really undercuts the genuinely interesting drama elements of the plot. Im not saying that they CANT have sex in this film. and its perfectly justified for a chunk of the runtime. BUT…someones naked in literally every other scene of this thing, and it quickly becomes apparent that…there isnt any reason for it. its just there because they feel like it’ll shift more copies.
I was really interested in seeing the blossoming relationship between Caroline and Lisa, I’d have been happy to see the script set the pair up as a double act, luring men and women back to an acquired apartment to ‘feed’ caroline and eventually falling foul of the deception.
But no…instead we get such thrilling scenes as ‘Caroline deciding to take an extended bath at someones house’, ‘a performance art piece at a night club featuring 2 semi naked men and a woman playing guitar who’s nude from the waist down’ and who could forget the extended scene of ‘Woman with HUGE boobs washing said HUGE boobs for 3-5 minutes straight…unbroken.’
It just…really lowers the artistic merit the film COULD have had, and kind of put me off the film honestly, the script itself has a TON of nice scenes, great dialogue moments, GOOD ideas…but it just…isnt refined enough to really crystialize the project into something more meaningful than ‘a half decent drama with a LOT of poorly shot porn inserted’.
The pacings a crawl for large chunks of the runtime, the tone cant seem to decide between a sentimental love story with a dark comedy twist and a kind of sleazy exploitation piece. the ending isnt really very satisfying and the characters depth is very much hit and miss depending seemingly on how bothered the writer was that day in adding any kind of depth.
Which leads me onto the OTHER big problem this film has, the medium. Im an advocate for VHS as a format, I believe that SOV put the power of film making into the hands of the everyday guy or gal. But I also have to acknowledge that the format you choose to shoot your film on WILL ultimately have an impact on how its percieved.
‘Red Lips’ has a LOT of big ideas, and Donald Farmer quite clearly had a strong creative vision for how he wanted this film to look. theres a strong styalization across the runtime and it COULD have looked great…on ANY other medium than VHS.
Shot on film? or even early digi beta? I can clearly see that this thing would have looked REALLY quite impressive. theres tremendous colour and lighting usage throughout and the film has a strong identity to it. But shooting on VHS washes out almost all the colour work, makes the lighting look cheap, in places the copy I watched (released by Saturns Core) had tape damage which threw the picture out entirely for a few seconds…the 4:3 aspect ratio means you lose a lot of the compositional range that a 16:9 or academy ratio picture might have offered.
Basically, a LOT of hard work went into this film…I can see that. and I ACHED through this film to see it remade in HD. Because I think with that level of high quality picture work and the same heart that went into this one. it could look INCREDIBLE…but instead, it looks cheap, washed out and awkward here…and thats a real shame.
Performances are a real mixed bag as well. Ghetty Chasun and Michelle Baur are EASILY two of the best actors in this, and I honestly think this may well be Baurs best performance post her 80s hayday. the pair have great chemestry, portray a believable relationship and have a very naturalistic presence together on screen…the supporting cast however? well; they range from not bad at all…to frankly ludicrous performances that genuinely made me wonder if these WERE actors or if Farmer had just grabbed someone from the carpark 10 minutes before rolling. TRUELY dismal, you may think the creaking you can hear in the background is the tape spindles whirring. But its actually the spines of Chasun and Baur carrying this thing.
The soundtracks a bit hit and miss too…I just…I really truely felt frustrated with this one. Its got SUCH a good skeleton on it, that I feel if it was remade on HD cameras and it paired back the sex/nudity to create more impactful scenes where the sex/nudity actually MEANT something to the narrative. this would be a 4 and a half star film for me and one i’d have on repeat circulation…as it stands its a film that I enjoyed the idea of, more than the execution. I could see myself revisiting this one, and if your getting into SOV, its one I could recommend happily…but its such a shame that it is what it is…
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