Truly Dreadful Film

It is a performances centric movie

Admirable film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I figured out the plot(?) out by the end of the film. As confusing as it was with me, I stuck with it until the conclusion as I did with 'Eraserhead.' It's like a difficult crossword puzzle. The film is challenging. What really kept me in it was the music (most of the classics were familiar; Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven) and the photography and imagery. Having a 50" plasma screen helped also. I saw the film on Sundance, which is now airing ads. Still, the film was not edited as is always the case on Sundance, and I appreciate that.The late scene, which depicts a youthful Nigerian boy with a young white Nigerian (is that possible?) being chased by Nazi's with dogs is abstract, not because of nudity, but probably because Nazi's don't like to see blacks and whites naked TOGETHER. (do I really have to put Nazi's in upper case letters).

The only thing that makes this painstakingly slow and utterly incomprehensible movie possible to finish in one go is the soundtrack. Otherwise, it's pretty much a typically European pretentious mess.Absolutely nothing connects to anything, at least not in a reasonable, valid or sufficient manner. Many characters, about which we find out almost nothing, are supposedly connected - but only the director knows how (and even that's questionable, since he was obviously on drugs).The dialogues are as scarce as I've seen anywhere before: this certainly doesn't help in clarifying things. The scenes with the black man and white woman playing Adam and Eve (so PC), and their subsequent exile from Eden by police with helicopters is straight out of Monty Python, except that this is a deadly serious pretentious drama and not a spoof.Is there anyone who can watch that scene in which Adam and Eve urinate (we are actually shown the urine leaving the top of his penis), and take that scene seriously? Most of the cast look like they walked straight out of a New York fashion show, and this cheapens the look of the movie substantially. Lars von Trier and his 95-ers must love this garbage.

I really don't like giving this film a numerical rating. It strikes me as an experiment that has and will cause some viewers to think things that Figgis might not be happy to hear about. His film "Liebestraum" is one of my favorites, but he might find my interpretations of that one quite odd. So what I have here are a list of ideas which I think are suggested by parts of the film. As one reviewer here said, this is not a film about sex. The sex and the title are there to drag people in and to keep some of them watching. Parts of the film are certainly straightforward enough as in the case of little Figgis being treated horribly in a modern 'civilized' school gymnasium setting. The description of primitive people and how they trained (or still train..) their children to be killers and cannibals when it comes to members of other tribes that comes before the school sequence certainly tells you what's going on. Civilization hasn't come very far. However, apologists for both the cannibal tribe and the 'war on obesity'might have to think the 'apologies' over. (unless they are hopeless) When it comes to animals..the human one is one of the really low ones, especially when it's part of a group or a tribe. Of course the scenes with the characters most reviewers call Adam and Eve do in the end suggest South Africa during the apartheid period. The police and guns and dogs. The twins..are an easy part. However, not all twins are happy to be twins. (And certain cultures view twins in very vicious tribal ways..) The sequence in the desert could give a viewer something to think about when someone comes around asking for donations for starving desert tribes who wear turbans and paint themselves blue. The tribe kills the woman, one of the twins,because she offered to stay behind while the others involved in the 'accident' drove to notify the police. A child who should not have been running alone in the desert was killed by the reckless driving of a western man incapable of much thought. He's no better than the jerks who laugh at the incident involving the blind woman's seeing eye dog earlier in the film. There too the twin tries to help and is hit at by the blind woman trying to fend off the dogs in heat and maybe their counterparts. The twin is innocent but the members of the tribe think in numbers. They are incapable of any of the nuances human beings should after all this time be capable of. The reckless driver gets off free and is happy to leave the woman behind. Her boyfriend is a little upset. Of course we don't know who played the tribe in the desert... It's a nicely cynical piece of work. Sex is the least interesting thing in the movie. (This is from june of 'joejune'.)

Well, I have to say that the comments on this movie are everywhere from "I'd give this a 0/10 if I could" to "10/10 masterpiece". Yes, this movie is all over the place. Confessed, I expected it to be that way when I decided to watch it. I would bear a non linear movie, and rather demented symbolism, if the theme is something that appeals to me, or better still - FITS the form of the movie. Sadly this did not. It's just art-cinema's answer to the hype around sex for pleasure nowadays. In a good movie, (just as with a good book) the theme should dominate the form. Sadly, the form was having epileptic fits here while the theme just sat there being generic and straightforward. This is rather like telling a story and structuring it like a poem. Why try to make the story of a (rather uninteresting, however handsome) man's sexual life up to his mid 40's subject to an artsy attack? The story (or the little that there IS) behind it is not deep, and not particularly meaningful, but the form (the way it's shot / the random scenes and flashbacks) didn't really help it to more seriosity and were hence, rather laughable. Triviality cloaked in 'artistry' really isn't down my street. If the theme would have been something very meaningful or complex or tragic, the form might have worked a little better (Why not give it an American Gothic touch, rather like McGrath or Brockden Brown in film version?) It would have raised the seriosity of the movie (and believe me... this movie is taking itself very seriously).I just cannot love a movie with such a trivial and generic theme (sex for pleasure) because it isn't really new or, as I said before, all too meaningful or deep in itself. Goes to show that you need a story that actually deserves to be wrapped in the cloak of stilted artistry.In its credit however, I will say that some of the camera work was stunning, and some visuals were quite breathtaking. I can't say I relate to the characters, but then with an artsy movie it's really hit or miss if you'll relate to them, since they must appeal to you personally to start off with, since they don't usually say much in their favor throughout the movie.Last but not least I'd like to say that even though I didn't particularly enjoy this movie doesn't mean that I don't enjoy art house movies. It's funny how people say "if you didn't like this you can go watch some generic love comedy in the cinema"... there's something in between too, you know! This isn't "either ultra-artsy or generic to an extreme degree" - there's some very good art-house flicks that realize that being alternative doesn't mean having to resort to obscure camera angles and a scattered plot.