The true model for Ferrara and St. John is Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Like Taxi Driver, Ms. 45 is a film constructed, ideally and often literally, from a point of view perspective – starting from the very first sequences where we see New York loafers addressing the camera directly, propositioning Thana with obscene remarks. And like Taxi Driver, Ferrara’s film is a portrait of a hellish metropolis, where violence and lust are endemic, and where the only apparent response is apocalyptic violence … St. John’s screenplay … is masterful in constructing, around the character’s madness, a network of references that turns the city into an eloquent reflection of her violence. Ferrara is absolutely rigorous in depicting violence and in calculating the viewer’s reactions … Ms. 45 is a surprisingly cohesive film, carried by the impressively physical performance of 17-year-old Zoë Tamerlis – a magnetic presence whose face veers between awkward and vampiric, childlike and sensual, and would rarely be seen again on screen … The rapid-fire montage of images from various angles lasting only seconds (see the photographer’s murder) contrasts with shots that exploit deep focus and multiple planes of action to define a desolate, hostile environment where Thana moves in constant danger. The realism of the New York setting – its alleys and abandoned lots – constantly slides into point of view distortions shaped by nightmares, hallucinations and mirror-bound delusions. The final sequence unfolds like a feerie, set in an unreal space dominated by a giant spiderweb and populated by costumed figures: a triumph of the grotesque where the macabre takes easy hold.

Alberto Pezzotta, Abel Ferrara, Il Castoro, Milan 1998