At one point in MAXXXINE, a character says that it’s all about money. But that’s not true, at least not in this story of Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), born Miller, who has reached the top of the adult film industry, but at 33, knows that the clock is ticking on her career in porn. And so, the refugee from small-town Texas, and a fundamentalist family, has set her sights on being a star in the mainstream film business because for her, it’s not about money, it’s about fame. Thus, in Ti West’s third installment of the X saga, the motivation is screen immortality delivered in an arch satire told with in the horror idiom that has become his trademark style.
The time is 1985, and we are reminded that this is the era of Reagan and the Night Stalker. Satanic cults obsess the public, so much so that Hollywood is happy to oblige with its entertainment output, provoking upstanding citizens protest them even as a serial killer who is not the Night Stalker is killing working girls and leaving the mark of Satan upon them. The media may not have figured out that there is another serial killer on the loose, but not two LA cops (Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan), who soon notice that the victims all seem to have a connection to Maxine. They also, with badly timed good-cop/bad cop fail to convince Maxine to help. The blood bath continues as Maxine struggles with her own past traumas, and an old crime that won’t stay buried.
We are in Hollywood, but not the La La Land of tinsel, but rather the Hollywood of flesh peddlers and wannabes who scurry over the Walk of Fame past seedy establishments on their way to nowhere. West fills his film with references to the past: a Buster Keaton impersonator who is no match for Maxine’s modern sensibilities; a cigarette stubbed out on Theda Bara’s star (also a reference to PEARL); and a trip to the Bates Motel set from PSYCHO. Filmic immortality is represented as hollow as the sets Maxine speeds through while on the run from John Labat (Kevin Bacon), the sleazy New Orleans detective with a courtly manner(shout-out to Daniel’s Craig’s Benoit Blanc). West raises the level of artifice into metaphor, rendering the single-minded determination of Maxine to join the ranks of A-level celebrities something to be admired and pitied. It can be no coincidence that the music track includes Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s rendition of Coleridge’s poem, Kublai Khan, which in turn mentions Xanadu, a shout-out to the one-time best film ever made, CITIZEN KANE, which has slipped in its rating to make way for more recent works. West’s script is a veritable cornucopia of such commentary.
That commentary is as precise as it is ruthless, a characteristic shared by Maxine and the director who will give her the shot at a different kind of stardom. Played with a cool authoritarian edge by Elizabeth Debicki, Elizabeth Bender knows that she is making schlock with THE PURITAN 2, her sequel to a cult classic that the original has become, but she has aspirations far beyond the genre, aspirations she lays out to Maxine as they tour the studio lot. Does Maxine grasp what her director is saying? Probably not, though she is a very savvy woman, and recognizes the vibe of wanting to be more than the world thinks you are, making her a willing accomplice to anything Elizabeth wants. After all, as a shining example of Reagan Era values, she is a hard worker who is not afraid to take what she wants and if people get hurt, well they bring it on themselves by being weak.
Goth continues her collaboration with West in a way that is complex beyond the surface demands of the script. Behind that baby face with the constellation of freckles over one eye is a savage who believes in biblical justice and in taking care of herself with unapologetic finality. Her crumbling when she is forced to turn to her agent/lawyer for help becomes discomfiting. Even if that lawyer, played with suavity by Giancarlo Esposito, is as ruthless Maxine, despite a soft spot for her that might be about his cut, but we can’t be sure.
MAXXINE is a roiling mix of horror and neo-noir with the femme fatale in no need of an anti-hero to come to her rescue. Taken on that level, it is a satisfying jaunt into gore and mystery, delivering jolting visuals and a suitably hyperbolic climax beneath the Hollywood sign. Sex, violence, and religion have never served a better purpose in keeping us diverted, and maybe just a little more uncomfortable than we planned.
Your Thoughts?