“Sex, Lies, and Videotape” (1989)
Steven Soderbergh’s debut, the self-consciously navel-gazey but totally brilliant “Sex, Lies and Videotape” is an epochal movie in many ways (all of which are discussed in depth here). And while the low-budget talky adult drama about a group of white, middle-class 20/30-somethings and their sexual dysfunctions may feature sightly less actual writhing than many others here, there’s no doubt it’s about sexual malaise and its effect on intimacy. Maladjusted Graham (this list’s poster boy James Spader) drifts into the lives of John, his wife Ann, and her sister Cynthia, with whom John is having an affair (Peter Gallagher, Andie MacDowell and Laura San Giacomo, respectively), and Graham’s fetish for taping women talking about sex gradually uncovers the sewn-up secrets each has been keeping from the other, and from themselves. But what saves it from being pot boiler-y, or salacious simply for the sake of it, is the writing: it’s often very witty, sometimes outright funny and, by its close, surprisingly touching for a film about brittle sexual facades. In fact, (much to the disappointment of flesh hounds attracted by the splashiness of the title) themes of voyeurism aside, it’s really about how sex can get in the way of real relationships, and how it can be mixed up with ego and self-image in such a way that it hampers or even destroys actual love. Both pretentious and wise at the same time, the film’s a true original even 25 years later.[A-]
“Killing Me Softly” (2001)
As the English-language debut of Palme D’Or-winning “Farewell My Concubine” and “The Emperor And The Assassin” director Chen Kaige, you could have been forgiven for looking forward to erotic thriller “Killing Me Softly.” The result, unfortunately, was an absolute train wreck, an unintentionally funny, ludicrously plotted film that drove Kaige straight back home, where he’s since remained. Heather Graham (never the most compelling actress even when she had strong material) plays an American woman in London who begins a relationship with a mysterious mountaineer (Joseph Fiennes). The pair are soon fucking on every surface that can be found, with Fiennes introducing his new lover to some light bondage by tying silk ropes around her throat and attaching them above the (roaring, obviously) fireplace. Copious nudity aside, it’s completely lacking in the danger and shock it appears to be going for. But then, while Kaige makes everything look very attractive, the proceedings are so ridiculous, the script so clunky, and the acting so dire (Graham is woefully miscast, while Fiennes, only a few years after the Oscar-winning success of “Shakespeare In Love,” is completely adrift) that your pulse wouldn’t raise much even if the sex was legitimately exciting. And given that they include at least one cutaway to a reaction shot of a cat, it’s really not. [F]
“Thanks For Sharing” (2013)
Inevitably seen as the higher-register, sweeter-tinged echo of Steve McQueen’s excoriating and spartan sex addiction drama “Shame,” Stuart Blumberg’s directorial debut is done no favors by the comparison, but taken on its own merits is a well-meaning and amiable enough dramedy. Featuring the intersecting lives of three friends who met through sex addiction group therapy, the film is unfortunately unfocused as a result–containing too many strands of familial, professional and romantic involvement to make good on all the story lines, let alone to do that and clearly articulate an original point of view with regards to sex addiction. In fact while it’s often instructive to note that sex addiction is similar in its psychological causes and effects to any other sort of addiction, it’s a point the film makes here rather too forcefully, jettisoning any insight into the specificity of the condition in favor of a “we’re all fucked up in some way” neatness before an inevitably pat, happy-ending conclusion is contrived by way of overlapping last-minute melodramas. The cast, however, do fine work bringing some character depth to slight material: Mark Ruffalo and Gwyneth Paltrow are appealing, Tim Robbins suitably conflicted as the elder statesman of the group who may not be as together as he seems, while Josh Gad is surprisingly soulful when he’s not being made the butt of the jokes, and Pink is quite the revelation in a smaller, but very impressive performance. It’s just a shame that the film’s laudable instinct to normalize a taboo subject goes so far as to make it all feel less provocative or insightful than bland and even overfamiliar. [C]
“Belle De Jour” (1967)
In the five decades since its release, Luis Buñuel’s “Belle De Jour” has practically become a byword for the illicit sexual fantasy life of that staple of 60s/70s erotica—the bored housewife. The perfectly sculpted Catherine Deneuve plays Severine, a young Parisian newlywed who loves her husband (Jean Sorel), but is unable to be attracted to him physically, nursing instead her own sadomasochistic fantasies. After advances from one of her husband’s friends, Husson (Michel Piccoli), she starts working in a brothel, becoming involved with a younger gangster (Pierre Clementi), but he becomes obsessive, ultimately shooting her husband, and leaving him in a coma. Despite the scurrilous subject matter, there’s little explicit material in “Belle De Jour,” but it’s still among the most erotic films ever made, with repression and secret desires and fetishes seeping out of every frame. Buñuel melds the surreal moments with psychological realism in a way that’s pretty much unforgettable, and saturated as it is with sex and sexual fantasy (even taboo imaginings like the gang rape that happens early on) the film is also a wry, witty comedy of manners. It’s telling that, when Manoel De Olivera directed a belated sequel forty years on with “Belle Toujours,” it fell decidedly flat; without Buñuel’s touch, and without Deneuve, it simply doesn’t work. [A]
“Teeth” (2007)
Literalizing the idea of the vagina dentata (toothed vagina) that was largely an invention perpetrated by old folk tales in an effort to discourage promiscuity, writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein‘s (son of Roy!) eye-openingly gory horror comedy is one of those ideas that we kind of can’t believe hadn’t been done before. Jess Weixler plays a young woman dealing with burgeoning sexual impulses that, she discovers, could potentially kill any sexual partners. And indeed she proceeds to do so, first accidentally in response to a rape, and then progressively more calculatedly as she works out her “power” and sets out to use it to wreak revenge on a near-uniformly rapey cast of menfolk. It’s a mark of just how committed Liechtenstein is to this agonizing concept that three different penises are bitten off during the film, not to mention four fingers, and just when we might have been feeling fatigued by all this Bobbit action, the film ups the ante by having the family dog chow down on a dismembered um, member. It’s schlocky, it’s B-grade, it’s hammy and creaky as all hell, but even with that its premise has more originality and more I-dare-you-to-keep-watching nastiness than Platinum Dunes does in its entire cynical cheapie horror remit. So if you’re looking for a sex-based slasher flick with a misandrist angle that features exactly non of the gloss of the current crop of horror retreads, look no further [C+]
