China moon

The picture takes place in one of the southern American cities near Miami. Detectives Kyle Bodine (Ed Harris) and Lamar Dicky (Benicio del Toro) visiting the scene of the murder. Kyle gives young Lamar investigative lessons, emphasizing that all killers make stupid mistakes, and as a result they come across.

In a local bar, Kyle meets the young beauty Rachel Munroe (Madeleine Stowe) and immediately falls in love with her, but she suddenly leaves. As it turns out, Rachel is the wife of wealthy banker Rupert Munroe (Charles Dance), who is cheating on her with her young employee Adele. Rachel receives from a private investigator incriminating photographs of her husband and gets drunk by the time he returns home, which leads to a scandal between them.

Kyle is looking for Rachel, and soon an affair begins between them. They spend a romantic evening boating on the lake. Kyle points to the big moon and says that his grandmother called such a moon porcelain, because it looks like a big porcelain dish. Rachel and Kyle bathe naked in the night lake. Kyle in love persuades Rachel to divorce her husband.

One day, Kyle and Lamar arrive at Munroe's house when neighbors call for noise. Rachel is beaten, but Rupert says that everything is in order and this is a common thing. Later, Rachel comes to Kyle and begins to dream about how to kill Rupert. She says she even bought a 9 caliber pistol.

After another quarrel with her husband, Rachel leaves for Miami, checks in at the hotel and rents a car, not noticing that Adele is following her. When Rachel quietly leaves the hotel in the middle of the night, Adele enters her room.

Rachel comes to Kyle, and with him goes to his house to collect things. Kyle does not notice how Rupert returns home. Between Rupert and Rachel, another quarrel arises, as a result of which she kills her husband from the gun she bought.

Kyle comes into the house, sees what has happened and is going to call the police, but Rachel stops him, saying that suspicion will fall on her because she has a motive (her husband’s money and hostile relationship with him), as well as her a trip to Miami is very much like trying to make yourself an alibi. Kyle helps her hide the traces of the crime, getting rid of the body, eliminating bullet holes in the wall and erasing all the prints. Rupert's body Kyle drowns in the same lake where he rode with Rachel in a boat.

Rachel secretly returns to the hotel in Miami and spends the next day as if nothing had happened. Returning to his house, Rachel calls the bank, pretending to be looking for a husband. After Rupert does not appear during the day, Rachel calls the police. On call, Kyle and Lamar arrive, who immediately begins to suspect Rachel that she is involved in this matter and could kill her husband with the help of one of her lovers. Kyle begins to doubt that Rachel told him the whole truth about this case.

Soon Lamar receives an anonymous message stating that Rupert’s car was discovered near the lake. Divers find Rupert's body in the lake. A 38-caliber bullet is extracted from the body, and Kyle uses the same caliber revolver. Kyle recalls that Rachel once found out from him the caliber of his weapons.

During a search of the house, Munroe Kyle finds photographs of Rupert and Adele in Rachel’s closet. Meanwhile, one of the experts discovers a bullet hole in the wall, from which he extracts a 38-caliber bullet. The chief temporarily suspends Kyle from participating in the investigation and asks to hand over his gun for examination.

Lamar later arrives for Kyle and brings him for interrogation. It turns out that the number of the gun passed by Kyle does not match the number registered with the police. During the trip, Kyle draws attention to the compass on the front of the Lamar's car. Returning after a hard interrogation, Kyle again examines the photographs found at Rachel and sees on one of them a reflection of the exact same compass that Lamar has.

Adele meets with Lamar, and he pays her for participating in the case, after she shows him a ticket confirming that she is leaving the city. Lamar promises to pay her the balance after he gets his share.

Kyle sneaks into Rachel's house and needs an explanation. She confesses that she was afraid that Rupert would leave her without money, and Lamar came up with a plan according to which she would inherit all of Rupert's fortune. Although Kyle served as the scapegoat in Lamar’s plan, along the way, Rachel really fell in love with him.

At the request of Kyle, Rachel makes an appointment with Lamar at the bar. Kyle walks up to Lamar and says he revealed his plan. That it was Lamar who replaced the bullets before the examination and replaced the gun. Kyle Lamar hid the service pistol in his car. The bartender sees how, under the threat of a weapon, Kyle leads Lamar away and calls the police. While Lamar rummages under the seat in search of a revolver, the police arrive. In a brawl, Lamar pushes Kyle's hand, a shot is heard, and the police return fire at Kyle, killing him. Rachel runs up to Kyle, takes out the revolver hidden in the car and kills Lamar.

Porcelain Moon is an inexpensive, stylish neonarium thriller with a good deal of suspense. The plot, mood and theme of the film are drawn from the classic noir films of the 1940s, as well as neo-noirs that became fashionable in the 1980s. As in most noirs, the plot is an intricate network of events with unexpected plot twists, including murders, juggling facts, conspiracy, betrayal, deceit and betrayal, which are based on greed, personal hatred, self-interest and love passion.

The film continues the tradition of such famous noir films as “Double Insurance” (1944) by Billy Wilder , where a fatal woman seduces and uses an insurance agent to kill her husband in such a way as to get double the amount of insurance for his death in an accident. In Orson Welles ’s film “ Lady from Shanghai ” (1949), the heroine of Rita Hayworth seduces a sailor and draws him into a complex web of conspiracy to get her husband’s inheritance and put the sailor himself as a killer.

In the 1980s, a number of psychological criminal thrillers appeared that developed the style of noir, and in many respects anticipated the appearance of the “Porcelain Moon”. The atmosphere of the suffocating heat of the American South was for the first time very successfully beaten in the criminal-sexual neo-noir “ Body Heat ” (1981) by Lawrence Casdan . In this film, as later in The Porcelain Moon, the fatal woman ( Kathleen Turner ) uses her spell to seduce an unsuccessful lawyer ( William Hurt ) and enter into a criminal conspiracy with him to kill her rich wretched husband, and then does from his lover scapegoat. But if the hero of Hert initially appears as a morally weak person who readily kills a person, then Harris represents the type of right cop who, against his will, agrees to become an accomplice in the murder. In general, from the point of view of the general atmosphere, plot, production, filming, music and play of the actors, “Heat of the Body” looks like a stronger predecessor of the “Porcelain Moon”.

In Richard Marquand 's Serrated Blade (1985), the hero Jeff Bridges , who killed his own wife for the sake of a large inheritance, uses his male charm to seduce a talented woman lawyer ( Glen Close ), who pulls him out of a practically hopeless situation in court, only in the end realizing that she was saving the killer. The heat of southern Louisiana again becomes an important element of the atmosphere in the crime thriller “ No Mercy ” (1986), where a Chicago detective ( Richard Gere ) tries to squeeze a brutal mafia and at the same time get his sexy girlfriend ( Kim Basinger ).

The plot twist of “Porcelain Moon” has some similarities with the picture “ There is no way out ” (1987), where the protagonist must conduct an investigation into the murder and at the same time hide the fact that he is the person he needs to find. A similar turn of the topic was the 1948 classic noir “ Big Clock ”, where a criminal observer, on behalf of the editorial office, is looking for a murder suspect. But since this suspect is himself, he accordingly tries to confuse the investigation as much as possible. In John Dahl’s “ Kill Me Again ” (1989), the criminal beauty deftly uses a private detective ( Val Kilmer ) to appropriate the stolen money, pretend to be his own death, and make the detective suspect of murder.

Roy Carlson, the author of the script “The Porcelain Moon”, borrowed a lot from both the above and some similar films, as a result the plot turned out to be too secondary (it always reminds me of something, especially “The Heat of the Body”). Another weakness of the scenario is the far-fetched nature of certain situations, a whole series of plot stretch marks and holes, which significantly reduces the credibility of the story. And finally, unlike most high-quality noirs, dialogue in the film suffers from the absence of bright, witty and aphoristic phrases.

The director of the film, John Bailey (1946), made his debut quite successfully in this new quality. Prior to that, he was known exclusively as the operator of such popular paintings as American Gigolo (1980), Cat People (1982), Great Disappointment (1983), Mishima: Life in Four Chapters (1985), " An Casual Tourist " (1988) and others. However, and as a director, he showed himself to be a fairly qualified specialist with a good sense of style, the ability to build a mise-en-scene and ensure the pace of the story. Bailey skillfully controlled the actors and escalated the tension, not forgetting about the formation of a fascinating visual picture that sets the film in the right mood and atmosphere.

Under the professional guidance of Bailey, cameraman Willy Karent drew a dark, noir picture saturated with heat and rain, setting the psychologically uncomplicated film in the right mood and volume. The modesty of the budget forced to transfer the main shootings to bars, restaurants, hotels and private houses, however, the artist adequately coped with the work, providing beautiful natural locations for shooting the southern nature, and especially the beauty of the shooting on the lake. The successful soundtrack of George Fenton, written in the best traditions of the neo-noir genre, also contributes to creating an atmosphere of noir suspense.

The main strength of the picture lies in the acting, if not outstanding, then more than worthy. The charismatic Harris gives his character psychological depth in the role of a detective who loses his head so much from love passion that he turns from a self-confident and everything controlling cop into a driven beast, unable to soberly assess the situation and use his rich professional experience and mind, to expose criminals in a timely manner. The 33-year-old Stow, in the heyday of her beauty, successfully played the role of a typical noir fatal woman, who, with the help of sexual charms, skillfully manipulates a man who got into her network, inciting him to crime. The following year, Stowe played in a similar thriller, Illegal Penetration (1992), where her character becomes a victim of sexual harassment by a vicious cop ( Ray Liotta ), who commits a crime to satisfy her desires. It was also interesting to see a very young and thin, 24-year-old Benicio del Toro in the role of a seemingly rustic cop, under whose guise there was an avid villain and a criminal brain of all this intricate intrigue.

• Neonoir

• Porcelain Moon at IMDB  
• Porcelain moon at Allmovie  
• Porcelain Moon at Turner Classic Movies
• Porcelain Moon at Rotten Tomatoes
• China moon movie trailer on youtube