Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1988

The Contenders:

Jodie Foster: The Accused (winner)
Meryl Streep: A Cry in the Dark
Glenn Close: Dangerous Liaisons
Sigourney Weaver: Gorillas in the Mist
Melanie Griffith: Working Girl

Reckless Endangerment

Film: The Accused
Format: Starz on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’ve complained in the last few weeks about the number of Holocaust movies I’ve watched and of being a bit burned out on them. That’s sort of an unpleasant thing to admit, because I’m also of the opinion that movies about that are the sort that we should keep front and center. I’m about to say the same thing about another genre of film. I wonder about how often rape is used as a plot device. There are plenty of times when it’s simply an unpleasant part of the film that is there to motivate someone or move the action along. In the case of a movie like The Accused, it’s the entire point of the film. This is a movie that starts with the rape and spends the rest of the movie revisiting it.

Yes, this is going to be as unpleasant as it sounds like it’s going to be. While the film starts with the rape, it really starts with the aftermath, with victim Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster), clothes torn, running out of the bar where the rape happened. It’s not until the end of the movie where we actually see the events in question. According to the trivia page on IMDB, the filming of the rape sequence caused one of the male actors to vomit, and Jodie Foster herself claims to have no memory of it despite frequent rehearsals.