The Grifters (M) PRESENTED IN 35MM FILM

The Grifters (M, 1990) Presented in 35mm Film by The Revival House Perth

Roy Dillon (John Cusack) is a small-time con artist working short cons across Los Angeles, caught between two dangerous women who represent the two possible futures of his criminal life. His estranged mother, Lilly (Anjelica Huston), a hardened, long-con grifter working for the mob, resurfaces in his life just as his girlfriend Myra (Annette Bening), an ambitious and manipulative fellow con artist, pushes Roy toward increasingly high-stakes and dangerous schemes. As mother, son, and girlfriend circle one another in a tense web of deception, manipulation, and competing loyalties, Roy finds himself caught between the world of small-time hustling he's always known and the far more perilous, morally corrosive path that both women represent, forcing him toward a reckoning that will determine which version of himself he ultimately becomes.

Director Stephen Frears, working from Donald E. Westlake's screenplay adapting Jim Thompson's novel, crafts a dark, morally corrosive noir that explores the corrupting nature of the confidence game and its effects on family bonds. Anjelica Huston delivers a fierce, Academy Award-nominated performance as the hardened Lilly, while Annette Bening brings dangerous sensuality and calculation to Myra, creating a genuinely unsettling triangle of manipulation between mother, son, and lover. John Cusack grounds the film's escalating tension with wary vulnerability, caught between two women who each see him as a means to their own ends. Frears's unflinching direction, paired with the film's bleak, unsentimental view of the con artist's world, results in a genre masterwork that refuses easy resolution, cementing The Grifters' status as one of the finest neo-noir films of its era.

Original format and audio experience of this film faithfully reproduced by The Revival House. Presented in 35mm film unless noted otherwise.

When: Wednesday, October 14th at 7:20PM
Where: The Revival House at the Como Theatre
Rating: M (Occasional violence, Coarse language, Sexual allusions)

Frears's dark neo-noir masterwork explores the corrosive nature of the con—experience Huston and Bening's fierce performances on 35mm film.