Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979)
By Vivienne Dick
"Lydia Lunch is the protagonist of Beauty Becomes The Beast, where she appears alternately as a five-year-old child and a tough teenager. Dick's densest and most associative film, Beauty Becomes The Beast is a virtual catalogue of female media images, ranging from Patty Hearst to 'I Love Lucy.' Switching scenes and modes like a bored TV watcher idly spinning the dial, the film depicts a world of women where mother and daughter are reciprocal roles in an ongoing chain of victimization.... Extremely effective, [this super 8 film] derives its considerable power mainly from the graphic regression of Lunch's persona and from an undercurrent of sexual rage that courses throughout." (J. Hoberman, October)
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