'Single White Female': Mise-en-sene

‘Single White Female’: Mise-en-scene

 

‘Single White Female’ is a thriller movie that was released in the year 1992, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The film is about a woman, who has a new lodger to live with her, who soon becomes obsessed with her to the point of imitating her and eventually trying to kill her.

The film is mostly set in an apartment building where the two main characters reside. A lot of the scenes take place in rooms in their apartment, and later in the film’s climax the action takes place in the basement of the building. I think that these locations and sets are an important aspect of the mise-en-scene, because they create a definite claustrophobic atmosphere, as if the protagonist is trapped with the villain and that there is no escape. Especially in the basement scenes when no other characters are aware that they are there, so they cannot be helped.

I think that the main significance of the costumes in ‘Single White Female’ is just to show how Hedra -the lodger- is copying Allie- the protagonist. As Hedra’s obsession with Allie gets worse, she dresses more similarly to Allie. As she starts to look more and more like Allie we get closer to the tensest part of the film towards the end.

Like most thriller films the most significant props are weapons. There are guns used in the film, in the climax Hedra finds a hook and threatens to use it against Allie, and Allie uses a knife to stab Hedra with in the end. Weapons are used to create violent scenes, and the violence is a convention of thriller films to produce danger and therefore build more tension as there is a risk of someone being harmed.