Female Perversions is a 1996 drama film, directed by Susan Streitfeld and starring Tilda Swinton, Amy Madigan, Karen Sillas, Frances Fisher, Paulina Porizkova and Clancy Brown. It draws its inspiration by Louise Kaplan's book of the same name.
Dresses, lipsticks, sex - the "perversions" (and neuroses) of Eve Stephens, a young, very successful lawyer. Her days are a tightrope act between extreme eloquence and frosty toughness on the one side, and scaring vulnerability on the other. The climax of her career shall be the possibly forthcoming appointment as a judge, but this step seems to be interrupted by her kleptomanian sister Mad who is arrested after one of her raids. Eve travels to Mad's town to stand by her in the jail. Their struggle about Mad's illness evokes suppressed conflicts. Eve stays at her sister's flat where she meets a girl that fights with her budding femininity. This movie shows a woman clearly struggling with her sexuality and the gender role she fulfills as a woman. Wrestling with her sexuality, she feels the need to mask herself from society, limited by the social conformity expected of all women. She is driven by the need to feel beautiful and normal, and because of what she believes society expects of her, has trouble accepting herself.