Black Snake Moan

Picture the scene as writer-director Craig Brewer pitches this movie to the powers that be: "So there's this radiator with a naked white chick chained to it, begging Samuel L. Jackson to…" "Stop right there Mr Brewer. You had us at radiator." Jackson's character Lazarus has got a bad case of the blues, his baby done left him and all the geetar twanging in the world ain't gonna bring her back. On the other side of town, Ricci's white-trash nympho Rae just can't get no satisfaction after her boyfriend (Timberlake) leaves for Iraq. Rae, apparently, has got dat sickness, whose precise symptoms appear to include writhing in one's knickers and humping anything that looks at you twice. One kerrayzee night too many finds her badly beaten and left for dead outside Lazarus' farm. But, Lazarus astutely concludes, Rae doesn't need a lift to the nearest ER and some emotional therapy, 'cos what problem can't be solved by a little Southern-fried sadomasochism? It's almost too easy to criticise Black Snake Moan, such is the overt, unabashed misogyny of its central premise. There's something genuinely disquieting about a film that celebrates the male sexual urge with raw Memphis juke-joint rhythms, but sees female desire as dangerous and in need of taming. It's hard out there for a nymphomaniac. I guess that's why they call it the blues. [Laura Smith]