As French as a baguette, or rather a bidet, the movie begins in a gay night club when one of the patrons finds a woman trying to slice her wrists in the john. After he takes her to a hospital she does for him what gay men do for one another, then offers him a fairly lucrative job. The job? Watching her where she can't be watched. And that's just the beginning.
For almost all of the rest of the film, the unnamed woman languorously lounges around nude on the bed, a naked maja, while the gay guy sits there and either looks on with disgust and insults her or strips and paws over her, slinging her pale limp limbs around as if they belonged to a no-longer-animate carcass.
She invites him to examine her body before and during her period. They share a glass of diluted menstrual blood. He outlines her nether regions in lipstick and sodomizes her while she lies blankly under him.
It's all just about as exciting as the drawings in a medical textbook. Actually, come to think of it, when I was a kid, thirty million years ago, those medical drawings were kind of entertaining. We also giggled while passing around a paperback with the titillating title, "The Layman's Legal Guide." At least two of us memorized the legal definition of "rape."
Well, that's neither here nor there. Did I mention that they have molasses-slow conversations during which neither of them smiles or laughs? They talk about things like "your disgusting obtuseness" and "your malevolent triviality." Where else but in France could you find two low-brow strangers carrying on a dialog like that. I was having dinner in a Parisian restaurant once when a fracas erupted at the next table. The maitre de apologized to me for the argument, explaining that the waiter was a Cartesian. Compare this with the similarly explicit but far less enlightening English film, "Nine Songs," where the couple have nothing to say at all.
Finally the gay guy returns for his appointed watching and finds the apartment empty except for a clump of bloodstained sheets, which he flings away in disgust.
Now, I understand that this film is -- I think I'm going to get this right -- this film is an exploration of gender issues. You see, men and women don't know each other very well. Especially men don't know women too well. Especially gay men. They don't know how to insert a tampon or anything like that, let alone how a woman thinks. I have a certain sympathy there, the problem being a real one since each person's inner organs are swimming in a sea of different hormones.
But -- well, these people aren't really supposed to be NORMAL in any way, are they? This isn't a story about a man and woman getting to know one another. It's about two fruitcakes who can't figure out what they're doing with one another.
I honestly hope that this isn't the director's idea of the relationship between the sexes -- and I mean sexes, not genders. The woman is lassitude incarnate. The guy is a revolting brutal pig. Is this supposed to illustrate the roles that men and women play in society? It's not a rhetorical question. I really don't know. Maybe you can figure it out.
The early anthropological theorist Westermarck argued that however women happen to be treated in a given culture they carried a mystery around with them, due chiefly to the fact that men simply cannot understand how or why women menstruate and have babies. Men were both envious, awed, and irritated by that mystique. Westermarck could have written this script.
For almost all of the rest of the film, the unnamed woman languorously lounges around nude on the bed, a naked maja, while the gay guy sits there and either looks on with disgust and insults her or strips and paws over her, slinging her pale limp limbs around as if they belonged to a no-longer-animate carcass.
She invites him to examine her body before and during her period. They share a glass of diluted menstrual blood. He outlines her nether regions in lipstick and sodomizes her while she lies blankly under him.
It's all just about as exciting as the drawings in a medical textbook. Actually, come to think of it, when I was a kid, thirty million years ago, those medical drawings were kind of entertaining. We also giggled while passing around a paperback with the titillating title, "The Layman's Legal Guide." At least two of us memorized the legal definition of "rape."
Well, that's neither here nor there. Did I mention that they have molasses-slow conversations during which neither of them smiles or laughs? They talk about things like "your disgusting obtuseness" and "your malevolent triviality." Where else but in France could you find two low-brow strangers carrying on a dialog like that. I was having dinner in a Parisian restaurant once when a fracas erupted at the next table. The maitre de apologized to me for the argument, explaining that the waiter was a Cartesian. Compare this with the similarly explicit but far less enlightening English film, "Nine Songs," where the couple have nothing to say at all.
Finally the gay guy returns for his appointed watching and finds the apartment empty except for a clump of bloodstained sheets, which he flings away in disgust.
Now, I understand that this film is -- I think I'm going to get this right -- this film is an exploration of gender issues. You see, men and women don't know each other very well. Especially men don't know women too well. Especially gay men. They don't know how to insert a tampon or anything like that, let alone how a woman thinks. I have a certain sympathy there, the problem being a real one since each person's inner organs are swimming in a sea of different hormones.
But -- well, these people aren't really supposed to be NORMAL in any way, are they? This isn't a story about a man and woman getting to know one another. It's about two fruitcakes who can't figure out what they're doing with one another.
I honestly hope that this isn't the director's idea of the relationship between the sexes -- and I mean sexes, not genders. The woman is lassitude incarnate. The guy is a revolting brutal pig. Is this supposed to illustrate the roles that men and women play in society? It's not a rhetorical question. I really don't know. Maybe you can figure it out.
The early anthropological theorist Westermarck argued that however women happen to be treated in a given culture they carried a mystery around with them, due chiefly to the fact that men simply cannot understand how or why women menstruate and have babies. Men were both envious, awed, and irritated by that mystique. Westermarck could have written this script.