Ms .45

A low-budget revenge film set in New York. Thana is a young woman who cannot speak, working in a garment workshop. One day on her way home from work she is attacked. The same day, entering her flat, she meets a second attack. Afterwards Thana goes out with a gun. At first she defends herself, then she starts looking. Her range of targets widens and at a certain point the narrative makes it hard to stay on her side. What the film is interested in is not justice but how a person's relationship with a city breaks. Because Thana does not speak she explains nothing, and the viewer knows her only through her actions. The best-known passage is the party at the end: she arrives in a nun's habit, and the scene gathers the film's whole idea into one image. It was made on a very small budget, in real streets, with a tiny crew. Zoë Lund plays Thana; she was seventeen at the time and the role made her name. She later worked as a screenwriter. Abel Ferrara directed. The film was the subject of censorship arguments for years and was banned in some countries. A cult production for anyone who likes underground cinema and New York films of the 1980s. Before you watch, know this: the film opens with sexual violence and no part of it is easy.