Ms .45

Abel Ferrara's second film, made for almost nothing in New York, and the most controlled thing he did.

Thana is a mute seamstress in the garment district who is assaulted twice in one day and starts shooting men. Zoë Lund was seventeen when it was shot and has no dialogue at all, which turns the performance into physical work: the film is legible entirely through what she does with her face and her walk, and it gets less legible as she deteriorates.

What separates it from the rest of the category is that Ferrara does not treat the reprisal as catharsis. Thana does not get better. The targets get less specific. By the Halloween party finale she is shooting at a category of person rather than at anybody who did anything.

Lund later wrote Bad Lieutenant for Ferrara. She died at 37.