“Eyes Wide Shut” (1999)
There are probably as many shades of opinion on Stanley Kubrick’s last film as there are people who’ve seen it. But for all it was divisive and controversial (to the point that its centerpiece sex scene was famously digitally altered for the U.S. theatrical release) it features a lot less actual sex than many films we list here, and a whole lot more psychosexual moralizing and agonizing. The story in a nutshell: Tom Cruise’s successful New York doctor embarks on a personal odyssey into the heart of his own sexual darkness following his wife’s revelation that she has considered infidelity. In fact, the famous orgy scene, even restored to its original intended level of graphic-ness (not that graphic really) is perhaps the least persuasively sexy part of the film—its heightened, masque-ball ornateness does less for us than does Nicole Kidman’s tremendously brave and vulnerable “confessional” performance, for example. But that’s clearly the point; as so often at the more cerebral end of the spectrum, Kubrick here uses sex not as the endpoint of the film (except it literally is the last word) and instead employs it as the lever to pry open a Pandora’s Box of issues around intimacy and marriage and fidelity and trust. While we remain to this day more muted in our appreciation for this film than many of Kubrick’s others, there is no questioning the ambition on display, nor the laudable fearlessness of the project in its front-and-center foregrounding of sex and sexuality (especially the deviancy that can characterize even the most “normal” sexual relationship) in a way rarely seen in American cinema. [B]
“Fat Girl” (2001)
Director Catherine Breillat has made a name for herself for her graphic and unsparing explorations of female sexuality, especially in a nascent form, and while this is less graphic overall than “Romance,” for example, that impulse still definitely crescendoes in “Fat Girl,” which was perhaps more appropriately titled “A Ma Soeur” (“To My Sister”) in France. The majority of the film details the relationship between two adolescent sisters, marked by an entirely believable rivalry, now refracted through a sexual prism due to their age and life stage, as they go on holiday with their distracted, uninvolved parents. While the pretty 15-year-old Elena (Roxane Mesquida) experiments with flirtation, teasing and sex with Fernando, an Italian student they meet, 12-year-old Anais (Anais Reboux), plumper and far more insecure than her attractive sister, escapes instead into sad fantasy worlds and banana splits, though she’s exposed to every part of Elena’s relationship, (even the painful anal sex she endures) as they share a room, and as Fernando enjoys peacocking in front of her. The unstinting but detached style of the film, and its heavy emphasis on teenage sexuality would no doubt make it worthy of inclusion here anyway, but it’s the very ending that really tips it over into WTF territory as a terrifying encounter (and Anais’s terrifyingly ambivalent reaction to it) reveals that what we may have thought all along was a dark-tinged, occasionally pretentious coming-of-age/sibling rivalry film is, in fact, a horror movie. We’re not just watching a preteen girl start to access her sexual identity, we’re watching that process go terribly, disturbingly awry.[B-]
“Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” (1990)
Maybe not be the shining-est moment in Pedro Almodóvar’s career to date, but in its melding of psychosexual horror elements, captivity and obsession, not to mention the casting of regular collaborator Antonio Banderas, (who went to Hollywood straight after) there’s no mistaking whose mind”Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” is borne of. The film, however, actually marked a new chapter for Almodóvar; he fell out with his other muse, Carmen Maura, in pre-production, after telling her she was too old for the female lead, and the two had frosty relations until she returned to the fold for “Volver.” As for ‘Tie Me Up!,’ it’s a difficult beast; essentially a rather sweet romantic comedy, but one where the obsessive behavior sometimes seen in the genre is taken to extremes, with Banderas’ mental patient kidnapping a porn-actress-turned-horror-starlet (Victoria Abril), with whom he once slept and Stockholm Syndrome-ing her into a relationship. The film was derided by feminists on release, but its sweetness, provided by vulnerable, big-hearted turns by Banderas, Abril and Loles Léon, somewhat undercuts the dodgy premise, and at times it’s genuinely sexy, with Almodovar doing a fine job of showing the act itself in such a way that it looks un-glossed and real. In fact a couple of eye-opening scenes earned it an X-rating from the MPAA, leading to a lawsuit from Miramax that, while it failed, paved the way for the creation of the NC-17. Whatever you may think of its portrayal of kink, and physical and emotional domination, compare it with the very similarly-themed “Boxing Helena” that came three years later, and it’s close to a masterpiece. [B-]
“Boxing Helena” (1993)
Famous before it even reached screens—it was the directorial debut of the then 25-year-old Jennifer Chambers Lynch, daughter of the legendary David, and had made headlines when Kim Basinger pulled out, causing producers to sue, and win several million dollars—“Boxing Helena” became something of a punchline even before release, and even more of one after. Twenty years on, it stands as both a touch misunderstood, and still incredibly, jaw-droppingly terrible. Julian Sands (in a bit of casting that smacks of everyone being the third choice, bar perhaps a distracting cameo from Art Garfunkel, of all people) plays a surgeon sexually obsessed with a neighbor, the titular Helena (Sherilyn Fenn, visibly regretting the moment when her old “Twin Peaks” boss said “so, my daughter’s making a movie…”). She runs away from his house, and is hit by a car, so Sands kidnaps her, amputates her legs (and later, her arms), and keeps her prisoner in his home, where their tempestuous one-sided love affair continues. In theory, there’s an interesting, subversive feminist film somewhere here, but it would take a screenplay not written by a 19-year-old (as Lynch was when she penned it), and direction by someone aspiring to something more than ‘Adrian Lyne on ketamine’ to make it into anything less than a disaster. By the time it reaches the ‘it was all a dream!’ ending, you’ll think that Basinger’s multi-million dollar get-out payment was a bargain. [F]
“Sleeping Beauty” (2011)
Author Julia Leigh (who wrote the novel “The Hunter” on which the 2011 Willem Dafoe movie was based) was perhaps a victim of overhype for her directorial debut. Snagging a slot in the main competition in Cannes and with advance buzz promising something suffused with a daring and unusual eroticism, the cool, detached pictorialism of the final film may have seemed a disappointment to some. Our review was more positive, however, and it’s one we stand by: while the character of Lucy (Emily Browning) may remain underdeveloped and the story ends on too enigmatic a note for its own good, there’s a great deal to admire here. Less the feminist parable it was billed as and more an examination of the incremental decisions that can lead a biddable person deep, deep down the rabbit hole, the film actually portrays very little sex, but is absolutely about sexualized ideas of power and control. Lucy takes a job as a “silver service” private, lingerie-clad waitress, which leads to a lucrative sideline in allowing herself to be drugged into a comatose state while men (uniformly older, rich guys) are allowed to do what they will with her sleeping body, short of actual penetration. Featuring a frequently naked performance from Browning (who does go some way to imbuing Lucy with a personality, albeit a self-centered, rather calculating one), and tightly composed, marble-smooth cinematography, it’s a peculiar, chilly film that asks more questions than it answers, but the questions themselves are intriguing and worth the patience they demand. [B]
