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Brutal voyeurism, repulsion and social awareness
Lucy's journey into voyeuristic exposure at the country house continues through the
morbid gaze of Richard Reed, Miranda's lover, who embodies the second kind of voyeurism
represented in the film, this being an intrusive attitude leading to aggressive behaviour. He is
a personification of the kind of man that Western consumer society, with its devotion to
materialistic goals, considers a winner. He is handsome and health conscious, successful in
his legal career, married, and engaged in a love affair with a beautiful woman (Miranda). His
first appearance on screen is calculated to leave viewers with no doubts as to his
ambivalence; he flirts with Lucy at first sight, speaking poetic words, the insincerity of which
is underlined by Miranda who ironically comments that she had never been aware of his
poetic talents. From the moment he knows about Lucy's virginity, he becomes obsessed by it,
and, through his manner, viewers are made aware of the reason. He clearly considers Lucy's
virginity as a virtue that adds value to the goods, as it were, making Lucy a rare form of prey.
From that moment, he is portrayed as increasingly coarse and predatory. His POV shots are
characterized by 'active scopophilia and its investigative, sadistic, enquiring look' as
Elizabeth Cowie terms it (Cowie, 1997: 168) a gaze that sexually objectifies women.
Through his perspective, Lucy's body is framed from all angles, even from extremely low
angles to catch a glimpse of her underwear as in the hide-and-seek sequence. Viewed through
Richard's gaze, Lucy's young exuberance is charged with an erotic excitability, and adult
viewers of film will recognize the tactics he uses in to engender situations that will lead to
erotic contact with Lucy. This represents an interesting situation for the film viewers, in terms
of the concepts of alignment and allegiance (M. Smith, 1995: 75). As regards cognitive
alignment, (adult) viewers will be aligned with Richard because they will recognize the
strategies that he uses in order to get close to Lucy, but viewers may be simultaneously
repulsed as Richard's behaviour will probably be evaluated as undesirable and harmful, and
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