Deborah MacLaren in Naked (1993)

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The breakout film from toiling British stage and screen director Mike Leigh, Naked (1993) hit arthouse audiences like a ton of bricks when it debuted in the early 1990s. A filthy, seedy, unrepentantly dire view of life at the bottom, the film stars David Thewlis in a bravura performance as a cunningly quick-witted misanthrope who treats all those he encounters with scorn and contempt. From the opening scene, which finds Thewlis’s character raping a girl in a dirty Manchester ally, Leigh follows his anti-hero as he scours London, searching for sexual and emotional prey. Elizabeth Berrington, Deborah MacLaren, and the phenomenal Katrin Cartlidge all fall under the protagonist’s gaze, and all three women live up to the promise of Leigh’s title--even if the trappings for their strip-downs aren’t always entirely pleasant.