Eros (2004)

| Drama
USA / English
"Three visionary directors. One erotic journey.
" Three short films -- one each from directors Michelangelo Antonioni, Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar Wai -- address the themes of love and sex.
|
Almost what I expected- Antonioni's segment was flawed, but not unbearable, and the other two segments worked wonderfully
It's always a tricky thing to comment on these 'omnibus' films, where
world-renown directors come together to make little films combined as
one film. The two that are likely most well known to American
audiences, of most recent as twenty years, are New York Stories
(featuring Scorsese, Coppola, and Woody) and Four Rooms (Anders,
Rockwell, Rodriguez, and Tarantino). None of those films are total
masterpieces, due to the fact that there are always un-even bits by the
filmmakers, even in the better segments. Eros is no exception, but I
would argue that there has been some over-load of flack against the
short co-written and directed by 90-something year-old Michelangelo
Antonioni. His segment has been claimed by almost all the critics and
reviewers (on this site and for the press) has been claimed as a waste
of time, as total soft-core porn, the ideals of an old man wanting one
last grip on his libido. I didn't find his segment to be a waste,
although it is one of his stranger, more enigmatic films in his sixty
year career, and it isn't as fascinating as it used to be.
The other two segments are little classics in and of themselves for the
younger of the two filmmakers. Wong Kar Wai delivers a touching, sad
romantic tale of a tailor's apprentice who has a curiosity about a
woman who does something erotic with him on a first visit (hence the
title of the segment, The Hand, though it's not as pat a term as might
be imagined. The actors involved are all marvelous, and the style in
how Kaw-Wai sets up his shots demands attention, despite it being
unconventional. The acting is very natural, the music used comes in at
just the right moments for emotional contact (you almost anticipate it,
and when it comes, it's powerful), and the ending wraps the story up
rather fittingly. It goes to show that Kar-Wai might be the most
skilled at making romantic-dramas in China, or at least is the most
popular.
Steven Soderbergh, likely around the time he directed the slightly
off-putting Ocean's Twelve, concocted this sort of comedy of manners,
as he says, "so I could have my name on a poster with Antonioni." It
stars Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin as a salesman and a psychiatrist
respectively, and Downey's character is anxious about his job and, more
importantly, about a woman in his dream. Arkin is hilarious in his role
as a man who would much rather look out the window with binoculars at
someone we do not see in the short. But his physical mannerisms, as
Downey goes through his dream to confront himself (filmed in nice black
and white, by the way), makes the scene all the more worthwhile. The
last shots, jump cuts, of a paper airplane flying out the window are
filmed with a fine touch of whimsy. There is also a solid, painterly
use of blue in one particular part of the dream scene early on in the
segment.
Then we come to Antonioni. First off, let one address the good
qualities, or at least the fair, expectable qualities, that come with
many of Antonioni's films. In a sense, he's hearkening back to his
classic 'trilogy' (L'Aventurra, La Notte, The Eclipse), where a married
couple is going through a crisis, and they spend a lot of time not
saying anything to one another, and looking out at beautiful Italian
landscapes and beaches. In a way, I almost wish this was a
feature-length film as opposed to a more or less half hour short. I
wanted to know more about these people, about what they do, or what
they were doing or going to. But there seem to be two big flaws in the
segment (the nudity didn't bother me- there were actually a couple of
memorable shots, one of which just a woman's foot on a bed). One was
with the music. Some have said that the film is Antonioni's closest
trip to soft-core porn. While I would class his directorial eye and
style miles above anything on after-midnight Cinemax, the music by
Enrica Antonioni and Vinicio Milani is a complete contrast of the music
more associated with the director's work, which is either spellbinding
in it's atmosphere, or haunting with the usage of rock and roll. Here
he uses the music, electronic and with preposterous lyrics, in the more
'erotic' scenes. The other flaw is that, because of the film's short
length, there isn't enough time as usual to build up the enigmatic
stance of the story. The climax involves the two lead women (one the
wife, the other the stranger adulteress) completely nude looking at
each other on the beach. While it is interesting to have this image
open for interpretation, it is also frustrating in ways that weren't so
in the endings to the other Antonioni 'human mysteries'.
I understood some of the implications, but I didn't get the sense of
what was lost or what was gained or omitted like in the other two
segments. Everything shot and acted looks sweet and tight and
concentrated in the segment, still a technical pro, but what exactly is
the point? Still, I would not have walked out during the middle of
anything by Antonioni, and this, by default the weakest of the bunch,
should be open to more interpretation than what Ebert described as "an
embarrassment". I felt the eye and mind of an artist working still
during "The Dangerous Thread of Things", and my only wish was that I
could understand more than what I was seeing and experiencing. Perhaps
his segment, like Kaw-Wai's and Soderbergh's, are left up to that
interpretation for a purpose. I'll likely want to see all three
segments sometime in the future, and maybe get a better take on what
eluded me or what enticed me. But, at the least, I didn't leave the
theater feeling entirely cheated.
Grade (averaged): B+
PersonalSeen it: | Nej |
Nr of disks/tapes: | 1 |
Storage device: | DVD |
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