I’ve stated time and time again that along with Frank Hennenlotter and Larry Fessenden, Abel Ferrara is one of the best filmmakers to capture New York City. Ferrara finds ways to highlight the disgusting and gritty aspects of New York while still letting moments of beauty shine through. His films are not for the faint of heart, as an all-too-true level of authenticity lurks below the surface. When I learned that we were focusing on female-led films for March, the first film that came to mind was Ms .45. This film stuck with me long after watching it the first time and is one of Ferrara’s best and most poignant works.
Ms .45 follows Thana (Zoë Tamerlis Lund), a young woman (17 at the time of filming) who works as a seamstress in New York’s Garment District. Thana is nonverbal and communicates with her boss Albert (Albert Sinkys), coworkers, and landlord Mrs. Nasone (Editta Sherman) through notes. On her way home from work one day, she’s relentlessly catcalled by men on the street before being taken into an alley at gunpoint and violently sexually assaulted. She finally makes her way back home, only to get robbed and sexually assaulted… again. Thana takes the law into her own hands, killing the second assailant and taking his gun: a .45 caliber.
A switch flips in Thana’s head, and she goes from meek and timid to violent and seeking justice.
Written by Nicholas St. John and directed by Abel Ferrara, Ms .45 is a fascinating angle on the rape/revenge subgenre. Having the lead female as a nonverbal character could have been disastrous. Still, Ferrara’s direction for Lund and her supreme acting propels this film to one of his best. Ms .45 marks the third collaboration between St. John and Ferrara (their first being a porno, their second being The Driller Killer). Their collaborative efforts are incredibly apparent in this film, though it’s interesting that Lund commented on the script’s short page count. This caused Ferrara and cinematographer James Momel to focus on holding longer shots and creating an overwhelming sense of dread.
Zoë Tamerlis Lund makes this film. Her near-silent performance cuts through the film stock like a knife. Few actors can handle an expression-based performance like she does. That makes her untimely death in 1999 even more tragic. Lund would go on to co-write Bad Luitenant with Ferrara. Her passion for film and all things creativity is beyond palpable.
The kills here look fine but this film is far from as violently graphic as The Driller Killer. It almost seems that Ferrara pays homage to giallo with the pinkish-hued blood that spills. Thana’s kills are with the titular .45, which is an interesting weapon for a film of this type. It would make more sense for Thana to use a more phallic weapon like a knife with the themes this film tries to put forward. But I must give St. John and Ferrara props for how they portray toxic masculinity in the 80s.
Ms .45 is a straightforward rape/revenge film that gives you the reasoning for its brutality up front and lets you take a ride with Thana through her spiraling mental health. It doesn’t propose to be more than it is, but doesn’t fall under the umbrella of vapid, brutal just-to-be brutal films like many in this subgenre. For their second feature film, Ms .45 is a success and gets its point succinctly across. It’s one of the more tame rape/revenge films that doesn’t make you feel as icky as others do. This film left me feeling robbed of what could have been a long, brilliant career from Zoë Tamerlis Lund.