Iona Firouzabadi
posted 23 May 2007

This is a bizarre film. It’s quite hard to work out what its point is. Hazarding a guess it seems to be that Southern girls who are sexually abused turn into nymphomaniacs who are cured by chastity belts. It’s ambiguous as to whether this is a) comic b) badly conceived c) misogynistic.

We begin with a black and white interview of a black musician, telling us the blues is all about men, women and matters of the heart. Putting aside the fact that this is utterly banal information, the archive footage seems to have been stuck on in a vain attempt to give the picture some objective credibility. This does not work.

The meat of our story is Christina Ricci. She plays Rae, a dirty blonde in more ways than one. Rae’s father abused her when she was a kid – ergo she now struts around town wearing minimal clothing and cursing a lot. Justin Timberlake plays her lover-boy and saviour Ronnie. But he’s off to join the army and without him what’s a dirty blonde to do but become the town whore? See, Christina plays a girl with an itch only a man can scratch. Rarely will you watch on screen something more oddly risible than her anxiety attacks that manifest as an uncontrollable sex addiction. They really do beg the phrase - what the fuck?

So while Ronnie is out of town, Rae hooks up with local dealer and cliché of a black man Tehronne, badly acted by David Banner. She takes a cocktail of pills and ends up in a slow motion outdoor party sequence - subtly visualised through a blue filter – that looks remarkably like a frat house porno with a budget. Somewhere between The Addams Family and The Opposite of Sex Christina Ricci got boobs and you’ll see a lot of them here. What’s less evident is any outlet for her to display her considerable acting talent. Her role is so psychologically implausible and under-written that you wonder why she said yes to it – unless she actively wants to be seen as some messed-up sex object, which is just too depressing-a-thought to contemplate.

And now we get to the truly nasty and ridiculous bit. After her pilled up sex-frolic (which involves volley-ball, nearly forgot to mention that), Ronnie’s best buddy Gill (Michael Raymond-James), with a world-weary sense of responsibility, offers to drive our semi-clad heroine home - needless to say he makes a pass at her in the wagon. She sniggers at him, mumbling something about how he couldn’t possibly give her what black-man Tehronne could. Lacking a witty repost, Gill then smashes several punches into her face and leaves her for dead on the roadside. Next morning Lazarus (Samuel L Jackson), a market gardener in late middle age, discovers her – stretched across the road like some bloodied Playboy centre-fold. Recently estranged from his wife, likeable Lazarus decides that what this girl really needs to cure her of her wicked whoring ways is to be chained to a radiator.

Yep – chained to a radiator. It’s just weird. And wrong. But mainly weird.

Quite what Samuel L Jackson is doing in this film, with its stereotyped rendering of African American culture and its 15 certificate, is I fear going to remain one of the great mysteries of our time. Unless it’s because about three quarters of the way in we discover Lazarus is an old blues maestro, allowing Mr Jackson to lay down some tracks on celluloid. Justin Timberlake is fine. He can act – at least he can cry and come across as vulnerable and metro-sexual in that way that only guys from boy-bands can. The final couple of scenes between him and Ricci are probably the best Black Snake Moan has to offer – in fact, they’re almost touching.

Along the way this film makes several important points – such as it’s good for women to dress modestly and to get married, but it’s also important for them to look sexually desirable whilst modelling a black eye. It thereby consigns 1970s feminism to its rightful place in the bin of history. If either the Christian Right, or indeed the Taliban, had a film awards ceremony, I’m sure this year they’d give due credit to writer/director Craig Brewer’s attempts at moviemaking. Though unfortunately Brewer’s inability to keep a sense of pace or time in this film might count against him. Apparently only a week goes past from beginning to end, but it truly does feel like months.

And lastly, what’s with the title?