In addition to being a sly post-Feminist meditation on the theme of empowerment via self-exploitation and violence, Web of Seduction is a timely liberal commentary on the US's recent/current state of affairs. Several allusions to the `theft' of the 2000 election (e.g. manipulating state statutes to bypass the normal unfolding of legal events; the political philosophy of `by any means necessary'; the anxiety of inherited position) make this biting satire a sure bet for any armchair politicians who like taking a hard look at the GOP along with a little TnA. Director Blain Brown once again pays homage to Hitchcock with his expert handling of the genre convention of voyeurism (more deeply explored in his 1997 debut I'm Watching You), perhaps as an acknowledgment of our own position as spectators rather than participants in the field of American politics. Gifted with an intuitive grasp of mis-en-scene (notice redhead Lauren Hays's deliberately false `tan'), Brown casts an unflinching spotlight on the corruption of the so-called `California lifestyle' where back room conspiracies are the norm, even in the most intimate of relationships everyone is `acting', and above all else, money reigns supreme. In a way, eerily prescient of the 2003 CA gubernatorial election, this film is equally accessible to political neophyte and expert alike.
