That Scene with Katherine Waterston

Cruising around the net reading reviews for Inherent Vice, I found an article in the Washington Post titled something like "Katherine Waterston is Ready to Answer Your Lame Questions About That Scene."

Too clever by half, that approach. The approach is: "Yeah, yeah, Katherine Waterston has an extended nude scene in Inherent Vice and she knows that's all you're going to ask her about so she's prepared to answer without shame."

When the real issue is: "Hey, this is an arty and hard-to-understsand masterpiece by Paul Thomas Anderson, but we want to make sure that you know Katherine Waterston has an extended nude sex scene in it with Joaquin Phoenix. So please attend."

This is "selling something by pretending not to sell it."

Her answers were predictable, because what else could they be. I DID like the fact that they found her famous actor father -- Sam Waterston of Law and Order, and got HIS quote on the scene: "It's no big whoop."

But actually, as such scenes go, its pretty interesting and captures, I think , the allure of women to men over all time.

We keep in mind that way back at the beginning of the movie, Waterston's character, gloriously named Shasta Fay Hepworth, arrived at the beachfront shack of her ex-lover, private investigator Doc Sportino(Joaquin Phoenix) in an agititated, terrified, desperate state -- she sold him out to date a married rich guy, but now that rich guy is looking to be committed to the loony bin by his wife and her lover and...and..

..and Shasta disappears. For much of the movie, except in brief flashbacks.

And then she returns, much later, and much to the surprise of Doc. There are other elements to the scene(a funny phone call from Bigfoot the Cop, for instance) but then Shasta appears. Naked and blissed-out(drugs) and horny without being giving. There's a brief shot to establish full frontal and then she settles in for a more carefully filmed long nude physical seduction of Doc. Which "ends" with the physical assault on her by Doc that she desires(for being a "bad girl") but then which turns deadpan funny as she notes "This doesn't mean we're back together" and Doc and she continue a conversation as if nothing has happened.

All the elements there. The way the "scared girl" of the first scene is now this entirely self-possessed femme fatale. The way her seductive manner seems blurred by a druggy indifference. The way she stops being "recognizably human" and becomes this sultry suggester of sex(women sometimes seem to go in a trance in this mood).

And the way she teases and confronts Doc with enough jealousy-invoking imagery of "that other rich guy" so as to rouse him from his doper's stupor into sexual aggression.

Then she says, "this doesn't mean we're back together."

Perfect. What a scene. All those interviewers wanted to get at was the nudity, but its her very strange, very accurate performance of a woman in seduction mode, that its all about.

And her line, "this doesn't mean we're back together" -- which returns her to "girl who got away status" with the lonely Doc..comes back at the end of the movie in a whole new way.