Sex in Cinema 1999

Last March, we saw the Academy Award for Best Picture go to Shakespeare in Love (1998 release, 1999 phenomenon), a sparkling romantic comedy that sets forth the proposition that love, desire, creativity, wit and nudity all spring from the same animating spirits.

Inasmuch as Shakespeare in Love was simply the sexiest Best Picture ever, we might have expected to see an abundance of films seeking to reproduce its formula for success. Instead, we watched the usual parade of special effects–laden extravaganzas, only a few of which managed to work up some wows. Meanwhile, Eyes Wide Shut, which was expected to be an intelligent and gripping exploration of sexuality, turned out to be wrongheaded and dreary. American Pie, on the other hand, which was expected to be just another gross adolescent sex comedy, in fact was surprisingly intelligent and tender. Notting Hill was expected to be the year's sexy romantic; it was, however, about fame.

And whatever anyone thought the cinematic sex trend of the year was going to be, nobody had his money on coitus interruptus. To analysts of the American psyche this might suggest an ambivalent attitude toward sex. But, hey, this is Hollywood, where it's all entertainment.

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The New Classic

Director Paul Weitz' American Pie, the story of four likable high school seniors, virgins all, who pledge to have sex before the end of prom night, was the biggest surprise of the year. The film deftly combines good humor and an appreciation of people's vulnerabilities with a willingness to mine laughter from situations that both astonish and disgust.

American Pie delivers the news not only that the sexual revolution is over and the revolutionaries have won, but that sex itself is no longer revolutionary. Sex in this movie is a part of everyday life—a special part, an important part, an often consuming and confusing part, but not a shameful part. The boys and girls in the film are eager and open and curious about it.

The Big Anticlimax

The most anticipated movie of the year was Eyes Wide Shut. Stanley Kubrick's return to the screen after a 12-year absence, with Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise in a film about sex, guaranteed that this film would generate a buzz. Add to the buzz the stories about the prolonged shooting schedule, Kubrick's perfectionism and his death, and Eyes Wide Shut, it seemed, had the ingredients to be not just a movie but a legend. Although it turned out to be a serious and intelligent film, it unfortunately didn't have a lot of spark.

Based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Dream Story, Eyes Wide Shut is the tale of a respectable physician who grapples with the unsettling emotions brought on by his repressed sexual dreams and the sexual fantasies of his wife. The centerpiece of the movie, and unfortunately its phoniest moment, is a ritual masked orgy in an opulent Long Island mansion. There Cruise and about a hundred other masked and caped guests watch a dozen or so tall, lithe, slim-hipped, splendidly breasted women—did I mention that they're wearing big, stupid masks?—move sinuously though a ceremony of sorts, then select a guest and slink off for action (at least all the action that wasn't digitally obscured to avoid an NC-17 rating from the MPAA).

Never was a film so desperately in need of Mel Brooks.

Life or Death?

Sex in Eyes Wide Shut is never far from death. The daughter of a patient who has died comes on to Dr. Harford (Cruise) while the corpse is still in the room. The prostitute learns she has HIV. The party girl dies. Connecting sex and death isn't a brainstorm for Hollywood; as every fan of teen slasher movies knows, after first base comes second, after second base comes third, and after third base comes decapitation. That axiom got other workouts this year. In Elizabeth, Cate Blanchett returns to celibacy to become the virgin queen after learning that her lover had been part of a plot to kill her. In Summer of Sam, Spike Lee uses the 1977 Son of Sam murders, most of which claimed women who were parked in cars with their boyfriends, as the backdrop to a hairdresser's struggles over sex. The city's fears and his anxieties get twisted into a big knot, and the conflict gets taken out on a friend who dances at a gay strip club—a sexual other, in other words. Unlike Kubrick, Lee seems to lament the connection between sex and death.

That connection is also established in Cruel Intentions, a smart update of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Here, rich, depraved superbrats enjoy destroying the reputations of their classmates and aim to ruin a new girl in school who is proud of her virginity. For a movie that doesn't expose a great deal of flesh, Cruel Intentions is hot. The scene in which a primly dressed Sarah Michele Gellar tutors the nubile Selma Blair on the art of French kissing, and the one in which she arouses Ryan Phillippe by grinding against him are among the sexiest of the year.

Nap Time for Censors

Unless Kevin Smith's latest film, Dogma—wherein a descendant of Jesus works in an abortion clinic and Alanis Morissette plays God—gets a distributor (and at this writing it hasn't), the nation's bluenoses will have had a fairly calm year.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut came across as one long, widess effort to provoke a fight with the MPAA. It must have come as a terrible disappointment when the ratings board allowed even the tide to pass by without a peep. Meanwhile, in Georgia, a woman filed a criminal complaint against a local Toys R Us after her 11-year-old son read the box for an Austin Powers action figure and asked her what horny means.

A more vivid response no doubt awaits French director Catherine Breillat's Romance, which caused a storm of publicity when it opened in Paris (the controversy should continue when the picture opens here next year). Romance has been called the most sexually audacious movie since Last Tango in Paris, though it far outstrips that film in what it reveals. In the first five minutes, the heroine, a teacher named Marie, performs oral sex on her boyfriend, who not only declines to reciprocate but refuses to touch her at all. Marie decides she had better shop around, and she begins picking up men, one of whom is played by Italian porno king Rocco Siffredi. Her graphic odyssey includes scenes of ejaculation and bondage, leading a number of critics to label the film as pornography.

Before, During and After

The movies this past year provided a cinematic gallery of horrible pickup lines. In American Pie, one of the teenagers, parked in a lovers' lane with a girl, starts off asking her questions about herself, then abruptly points to his crotch and tells her, "Suck the big one, beautiful!" In Go, one supermarket clerk (male) pays another clerk (female) to take his shift. "I'll throw in $20 for a blow job," he offers. She demurs. In Election, a frustrated teacher befriends a divorcée. "What do you think?" he blurts out following an afternoon of friendliness. "Should we get a room?" "That's not funny," is the woman's reply. In 200 Cigarettes, Courtney Love propositions Paul Rudd in a coffee shop with the line "Do you want to fuck? 'Cause if you really want to fuck, we'll fuck."

Rudd accepts, but he and Love, sad to say, are interrupted by Rudd's ex-girlfriend, played by Janeane Garofalo. This moment calls to mind the scene in Ed TV where Jenna Elfman and Matthew McConaughey are interrupted during sex by a TV crew, and the later scene in which Elizabeth Hurley and Matthew McConaughey are interrupted during sex when he falls off the table onto a cat. Then there's the scene in Varsity Blues when a couple going at it atop a clothes drier are interrupted by a big drunken football player who barfs into the washing machine, and the scene in The Red Violin when a Byronic violinist and a gypsy lass are interrupted midfornication by Greta Scacchi, the violinist's mistress, who threatens them with a pistol.

What happens afterward? Well, in Notting Hill, Julia Roberts discovers that someone has put naked pictures of her on the Internet. In Cruel Intentions, Ryan Phillippe, seeking to embarrass his psychiatrist, seduces her daughter and puts pictures of her on the Internet. In Ed TV, Jenna Elfman is embarrassed to find that she has attained enough celebrity as Ed's girlfriend that someone has posted nude pictures of her on the Internet. And, of course, in American Pie, an entire sexual encounter, albeit a prematurely concluded one, is broadcast over the Internet.

Bad pickup lines, coitus interruptus, nude pictures on the Internet. American screenwriters: In the coming year, please try to get out more.