The first commandment here at Comstock Films is, “Thou shall not ruin the evening.” By that I mean that we and several other couples we know have had the experience of renting a porno flick with the expectation that it would help raise the temperature of the evening, only to have it be be a complete buzzkill. In fact, in our experience, this is the rule rather than the exception with porn, and that sad fact is a big part of why I started making my movies.

By that measure, Bertolucci’s “erotic film” The Dreamers was a failure, at least here at Casa Comstock.

Between the fact that Spring has finally sprung, and Damon & Hunter is finally out the door, the sap has been rising around here, and last night probably would have ended in a tangle of arms and legs, save the fact that at 9PM we put Bertolucci’s ode to late 60’s Paris in the DVD player and settled in to see what a master of the medium might do, unburdened by proscriptions against full frontal nudity, or handling a cock in full view of the camera. But after the movie, instead of tumbling into bed together, it was more of a slump. Watching The Dreamers exhausted us.

In fairness to Bertolucci, I’m not sure he intended for The Dreamers to be a mood enhancer for us or anyone else. In fact, we woke up this morning still trying to decipher what his intentions were in making The Dreamers.

The nearest I can tell is it’s a movie not unlike Ridley Scott’s White Squall, which seemed mostly like an excuse for Scott to linger endlessly on young boys’ lithe and tanned bodies, dripping with beads of water. Substitute Eva Green’s lovely, but jarringly miscast tits as the object of the director’s lecherous gaze, and voila – The Dreamers.

Of course the movie is beautifully made. Bertulucci is a visual stylist on par with Scott; at one point I turned to Peggy and asked, “What do you suppose it would be like to make a film where not one fold of cloth was out of place?” Bertolucci’s eye for art-direction photography is unerring. There’s more craft, style and talent in one shot that you’ll find in my entire career.

But lovely as it was to see nakedness rendered so well, (including a couple of pitch perfect muff-nuzzling shots that are conspicuous in their absense from the entire rest of the catalog of cinematic depictions of lovemaking), for us the movie fell flat. It moved us only to discussion of how fractured and unsatisfying the film was, and how the nudity and sex felt forced and inflicted, which only added to our disappointment and dissatisfaction.

Now keep in mind that I come to films like this from a particular and perhaps narrow perspective. The Dreamers is part of a long line of European arthouse films that step well accross traditional American boundaries of how, and how much sex is depicted. Along with her tits, Eva Green’s sparsely furred cuntlips make an appearence in this film; the first time I think I’ve seen a twat in a “legitmate” production, and it was wonderful to see just how beautiful a naked woman and her naked sex parts can look with the full force of a studio production gazing upon them.

But like so many films that have come before it, The Dreamers wraps its sexuality inside a tale of darkness and despair. A disquieting and decidedly unerotic incest theme runs throughout the film, coating the entire movie with a glaze of sticky shame. Perhaps for some viewers that makes it more interesting, more dramatic, or even more tantalizing, but for me it’s just tiresome. I am weary of the notion that sex need be rendered so darkly and joylessly to be worthy of serious cinematic inquiry.

(Side note: Over on Tiny Nibbles Violet’s been blogging about the movie The Bridge, a production which purposely set out to, and does depict the very real, very violent deaths of several people. Do you suppose there’s any risk that Eric Steele, the film’s director will be sent to jail or have his house taken away?)

Of course I’m not sure what the answer is. As I said in a previous post No Sadness, Anguish, Pain, or Suffering, with or without sex, happiness is not particularly dramatic. But I don’t think that means that sex has to be sick, twisted, or sad to make a good sex movie. A documentary “portrait of a couple” is one answer; not perfect, but servicable. It is, however, terribly limited. I don’t expect doing what I do would hold Bertolucci’s interest for very long. But I have some other ideas too…

What shall it be next? I Am Curiuos? We have it in both Blue and Yellow. Nine Songs? Intimacy?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 2:52 am and is filed under Censorship, Filmcraft, Storycraft, The Dreamers, erotic documentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.