It’s been almost 30 years since Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton made her U.S. film debut with now-iconic erotic feature “Female Perversions,” the feature that saved her career as the actress now tells IndieWire. And just in time for the film’s anniversary, IndieWire is releasing the 4K trailer for its theatrical re-release.
Swinton stars as a bisexual lawyer who is “on the edge of professional breakthrough, personal breakdown, and sexual awakening,” according to the synopsis. The steamy role is among her best performances. “Female Perversions” was a Sundance Grand Jury nominee upon its festival premiere; it is now deemed a feminist classic.
Clancy Brown, Amy Madigan, Frances Fisher, Marcia Cross, and Paulina Porizkova co-star in the film directed by Susan Streitfeld. The then-first-time filmmaker Streitfeld co-wrote the psychological thriller with Louise Kaplan and Julie Hébert.
“When Susan and [producer] Mindy [Affrime] sent me ‘Female Perversions,’ I was considering my work in film over,” Swinton told IndieWire. “My friend and comrade Derek Jarman, with whom I had worked almost exclusively for nine years, had just died and I thought that with him ended my chances of working in the kind of cinema in which I had found my feet: independent, collaborative, radical in spirit. And then this script arrived, from Los Angeles of all places, from two women on exactly the same page. It allowed me to imagine a whole new path ahead, one along which I met people from all around the planet dedicated to a filmmaking practice and a kind of wild cinema that felt, at the same time, both home and away for me.”
Swinton continued, “I had, specifically, never visualized a world in which I might work in America, especially California which I ignorantly identified at the time as necessarily the seat of industrial, Hollywood dominant narrative conservative filmmaking. In America I always felt, still do, distinctly alien: foreign, European and un-disguisable as anything local…Susan opened a surprise door for me in that landscape. I am enormously proud of the film we made. The legacy of Susan and Mindy through this film, their dauntless self-determination and inspired leap of faith continues to burn brightly as a beacon of intent and purpose. I love them both very much.”
She concluded, “The gesture that ‘Female Perversions’ was then, and still remains, as a film inspired by a groundbreaking psychoanalytic treatise, promised something truly forward-looking and untried. We threw ourselves in.”
“Female Perversions” was restored by Vinegar Syndrome/Cinématographe in 2024. The restoration was completed from a 4K, 16-bit scan of the 35mm original camera negative by Vinegar Syndrome in Bridgeport, Connecticut, via an ARRISCAN XT. Frame-by-frame manual digital restoration, color grading, and transferring of the original stereo optical track sound was also completed by Vinegar Syndrome.
The restoration was a collaboration between Hope Runs High and Cinématographe, as supervised by Taylor Purdee of Hope Runs High, Justin LaLiberty of Cinématographe, and Ryan Emerson of Vinegar Syndrome. FotoKem provided the film negatives. The feature is a Hope Runs High release.
“Female Perversions” premieres in Los Angeles March 1 with a Q&A by Streitfeld. The film then debuts March 6 at the Nitehawk Williamsburg in New York as part of the The Future of Film is Female festival. It’s a Hope Runs High release. Check out the 4K trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.
