a review of 剃刀边缘

HOOPTOBER ONE NIGHT TWENTY-THREE: Another pretty fun Hitchcockian murder mystery with DePalma taking apparent inspiration from Italian gialli. Lots of interesting pieces here, particularly Nancy Allen's brassy performance in the lead and Michael Caine doing great work with the ambiguity of his psychiatrist, but also the fun procedural elements with Keith Gordon's teen-whiz kid character gimmicking up the time-delay camera and such. I just wish that the entire mystery didn't hinge around an extremely pre-1980s interpretation of dissociative identity disorder and trans identity that treats the latter as a mental illness. There is a very faint glimmer of queer subversion towards the end, when the Gordon character jokingly considers attempting his own gender transition as a fun science project, but it doesn't quite address the pathologization in the rest of the movie.