SOURCE: Monahan, Julie. “Rape and Death and the Maiden.” Off Our Backs 25, no. 4 (April 1995): 18.

In the following review, Monahan argues that Polanski's interpretation of Death and the Maiden confuses sexual assault with sex and demonstrates Polanski's “bumbling understanding of sexual violence.”

What, one wonders, attracted renegade director Roman Polanski to Death and the Maiden, Ariel Dorfman's story of torture and revenge in South America?

Visual clues abound, as we watch Polanski transmogrify an examination of human morality to the ever—titillating cinematic treatment of rape and sexual abuse.

Paulina, played by Sigourney Weaver, is a survivor of political torture during the reign of a repressive dictatorship. Her husband, Gerardo (Stuart Wilson), a former leader in the underground resistance, is now a lawyer who heads a commission charged with bringing the government death squads to justice.

The tension of the story, as written by Dorfman, lies in its balance...