Little Mother (1973)

Pretend that you were the teenage Madonna. On a dare, and because you were bored and adventurous, you have ditched junior high and slunk off to a slightly stinky, declining movie palace in the urban center of Detroit. Surrounded by rapt, semi-panting aficionados of film as art, you, the teenage Madonna, take in a viewing of Radley Metzger’s Little Mother (1973). A powerful stream of thought rushes through your head: “Some day,” you think, “I will become a fabulous cinema icon on a par with the exotic, severe glamour puss who is Christiane Krüger, and I too will play the ruthless, sexually manipulative wife of a president of a South American country, and my director will light my body so I appear to be emerging from a cocoon of heavenly light, and every illicit detail of my character’s whorish past will be presented with the hallowed care befitting the lives of the saints, but unlike this movie with its quick and funky chopped-in shots of genitals, I will actually suck cock long and lovingly and even do anal in my film.” Although you, as the teenage Madonna, made this vow in all sincerity, you unfortunately changed your mind. When your chance came to portray the morally compromised wife of a South American potentate, you substituted singing for sex; so Little Mother remains a superior big- or small-screen delight to Evita (1997) in every way that matters.