Exposed (James Toback, 1983)

 

In a way, the title of James Toback’s endlessly fascinating Exposed is diametrically misaligned with the underlying film, in that the trajectory of its protagonist Elizabeth Carlson is as much toward a kind of erasure or embalming as toward self-actualization. The opening stretch feels like a great American origin story, following Elizabeth as she quits school, returns home to her Swedish parents on their Wyoming farm, endures the ups and downs of New York at its most rough-edged, and then while reluctantly working as a waitress is discovered by a fashion photographer and becomes a world-famous model. An extended scene of Elizabeth dancing exuberantly in her new apartment, the embodiment of having arrived, is in hindsight a kind of conclusion, the film thereafter dominated by the rivalry of two men: a mysterious, at first seemingly romantic pursuer who initially calls himself Daniel Jelline (Rudolf Nureyev), his interest in her in fact partially or maybe primarily rooted in the knowledge that she fascinates the murderous terrorist Rivas (Harvey Keitel), and may be able to serve as bait. After initially resisting, Elizabeth starts following the trail by herself, finding her way to Rivas, who despite his suspicions allows her to observe the heart of his operation, including his murder of a group member who betrays him. The final freeze-frame of Elizabeth, at a moment of extreme trauma, bridges the many glamour photos we see of her and Jelline’s collected newspaper clippings of Rivas’ and other atrocities, as such summarizing the tension between image and action that propels much of the film, her activism and initiative having brought her to an existential dead end. The casting of Nureyev, and as a violin player rather than a dancer, might embody how the film seldom delivers its pleasures quite, or even at all, as one anticipates.