Pretty Persuasion movie review (2005)
Kimberly dislikes her English teacher, Percy Anderson (Ron Livingston), partly because of his classroom matter, partly because she dislikes all teachers, and partly because she suspects (correctly) that he harbors lustful thoughts for them. The thoughts don't bother Kimberly, a sexual predator, but they give her an idea: Why don't the three girls accuse Mr. Anderson of sexually molesting them? It could be good publicity for the acting career Kimberly dreams about. The two friends go along, carefully schooled by Kimberly.
The movie, directed by Marcos Siega and written by Skander Halim, exists uneasily somewhere between comedy and satire. When Mr. Anderson gives his wife (Selma Blair) a skirt like the students wear, and asks her to read an essay while he "grades" her, it might be funny if the movie itself were not so much more lethal.
What the movie gets right is that sexual molestation, especially against attractive, articulate students in rich neighborhoods, is a publicity magnet. The story attracts the predatory TV reporter Emily Klein (Jane Krakowski), who turns it into a running commentary on the virus of social depravity, without realizing she's a carrier. Mr. Anderson loses his job and the case is taken to trial, and the rest you will learn.
I admired the willingness of the screenplay to venture into deep waters; the movie's rating is still pending as I write, possibly because the MPAA thinks it is an R and the distributors would like a PG-13 audience, many of whom would find it shocking and disturbing. Like "Lolita," this is a movie about young girls but not for them. It makes some hard-edged observations about the current popularity, if that is the word, of suits charging sexual harassment (I refer not to the crime itself, which is evil, but to the way it is sometimes exploited to destroy innocent reputations). It is also dead right about the way some TV news outlets cover such "news" stories with a fervor entirely lacking as they regard more important topics. Coverage of molestation easily shades into voyeurism.
