LOS ANGELES — Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest flick, “Inherent Vice,” is a like human whirligig. Faces with funny names fly by in whimsical vignettes that evolve, dissolve and then hit you on head with charming, unsure “I think I get it!” clunks.
One of those funny-named faces happens to be played by Michelle Sinclair (aka Belladonna), whose signature gap-toothed smile looks just as good on the big screen as it does on a laptop.
Seven-years-retired adult starlet Sinclair plays Clancy Charlock, a babe with a black bob and a mini-dress, who drops in on P.I. Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) to try to find out more information about her brother’s recent, hardly accidental, death.
Although she alludes to sleeping with her brother’s friend and his friend’s roommate at the same time (“That’s how I prefer it,” she says) and flashes a little cheek, it is by no means a “sex scene.”
In fact, when an obviously smitten Sportello suggestively suggests that they "take the conversacion elsewhere,” Charlocks answers him with a pert slap across the face. She has another date to keep.
Sinclair gets serious face time, conversing for several minutes with lauded actor Phoenix, before exiting with two hulking members of the Aryan Brotherhood.
The scene fits in like all the other scenes — somehow — unevenly layering to form the obscured psychedelic masterpiece that Anderson (of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia” fame) adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the same name.
Besides Phoenix, and behind the funny names, the film features a slew of well-respected Hollywooders, including Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin and singer/songwriter Joanna Newsom.
“Inherent Vice” is now in theatres.
