Under The Cherry Moon

Long before Prince sabotaged his career by changing his name, suing his fans and falling out with his record company, he crafted this cinematic oddity to follow the monster success of Purple Rain and in one fell swoop, killed his film career stone dead.

On its release, Under The Cherry Moon was synonymous with prime turkey but, with the passing of time, this preening vanity project is actually rather charming and comic. Christopher Tracy (Prince) and cohort Tricky (Benton) are two black gigolos working the rich dames of the French Riviera. In a gorgeous opening sequence, Christopher Tracy is playing the piano and making eyes at a prospective conquest while Tricky sends over napkins bearing instructions. Light, self-mocking and playful, it could not be more different from Purple Rain's rock psychodrama.

Tracy and Tricky set their sights on young heiress Mary Sharon (Kirstin Scott Thomas making her debut) and set out to woo her at her twenty-first birthday party. Sharon emerges in her birthday suit, spies Tracy casting smouldering looks at her and demands these ne'er-do-wells are thrown from her party. Yet she just can't get Tracy out of her system and despite the fact that he is also boffing her mother, they soon begin a love affair. But their romance is threatened by the forbidding presence of Mary's father, Mr Sharon, played by Steven Berkoff. Oddly, Berkoff is the worst thing in the film, his severity completely at odds with the rich man's playpen vibe of the whole film.

Admittedly, Under The Cherry Moon has its fair share of clunky moments and it will take a willing suspension of critical faculties to enjoy, yet Prince and Jerome Benton's relationship is a homoerotic delight, while their black street postures rub amusingly up against Scott Thomas' tight-ass attitude. Unlike Purple Rain, there is a dearth of musical performances, though the skeletal funk and lush instrumentals that zip in and out of the soundtrack are pretty fantastic.

By the last half hour, Prince and Jerome run out of material and we are left with a rather dull playing out of a love story. Still, like that other notorious turkey Showgirls, Under The Cherry Moon is a pop confection that delights if approached sympathetically. As for the director, Prince went on to make Graffiti Bridge, the truly unredeemable Purple Rain sequel, an experience from which he, and all who witnessed it, never recovered.