Eine pornographische Beziehung

Her (Nathalie Baye) places an ad in a magazine looking for a sexual partner to share her fantasy. He (Sergi Lopez) responds. They meet in a bistro on a gray afternoon in Paris and proceed to a nearby hotel. Their coupling is very

satisfactory to them and they proceed to other encounters. All this is told in flashback with both speaking separately, and wistfully about what happened

and how it ended.

This is a fascinating story, appealingly told with sureness by director Frederic Foteyne and his attractive, expressive leads. Yes, their affair is casual, sexual and without the usual "meeting cute" baggage. Actually, I thought she was the engine that began and ended the affair. Lopez's character seems to be far more emotionally involved as the affair progress than Baye's. He responds to her

responding to him and you can see him falling for her. Her speech to him about her feelings is quite startling and you think, maybe he's going to seek her

commitment.

A happy ending, though this is not one of those silly tearjerkers where you sit there embarrassed, would have been wrong and it's very satisfying. I loved this small, quiet, movie. The sex is very discreet. The dialoge is direct and thank goodness this is not a wordy movie. It doesn't need it. It's got a very good director in control of his material and two fine leads who tell you all you need to know.

I just discovered Sergi Lopez was the villain in DIRTY PRETTY THINGS. He's a terrific screen presence.

Someone mentioned CHAOS (in connection with their review of this film),

another French film I recently discovered. Two more mature, well-written, well- acted and directed films could not be imagined. Highly recommended.

An unnamed man and woman find each other through the personal ads of a sex magazine, to engage in a pornographic act that forms their mutual fantasy (the camera, old-Hollywood style, lingers in the hotel corridor during the act itself). They meet again; and again. They start to get to know and like each other. They make normal love. Maybe they'll have a normal relationship. But the film continually reminds us of the proximity of the crowd, within which they might blur back into being strangers; of the beguilingly complex topography of relationships (you feel the emotional landscape as electrically as you feel her finger trace the contours of his face and back in one scene); of the possibility for devastatingly wrong moves even amid the most enveloping intimacy; of the inevitability that even our profoundest memories will erode; of the relationship between the experience and the interpretation of an event. This is the epitome of a concise, elegant, sensitively written and acted European film; not designed to move an artistic mountain, but a certain crowd-pleaser.

An ad in the paper with a specific sexual fantasy asked for. A meeting of 2 strangers, who remain so both to us and to each other. A subtle deepening of feelings for each other...this movie is so delicate it is like gossamer. Nuances of looks, smiles, movement. "Elle" winds up a little harder, "lui" a little softer. I was spellbound by it. Recommend it to those who like their movies to stay with them for a while. Great acting and direction.

This little movie is simply sublime. I ran across it again when searching for more Sergi Lopez films. His range is simply amazing, from sensitive fantasy lover (as in this film) to the most dastardly twisted villain. I would be hard-pressed to think of any more talented male actor in European film today. I particularly liked him in "Dirty Pretty Things", due to its serious, thoughtful treatment of the pressures on immigrants. "A Friend Like Harry" was just great entertainment, humor of the darkest sort.

"Une Liason Pornografique" is still another type of film altogether. The French produce many interesting films on sex, some successful, some less so. This is of the best I can recall from my own 20-year love affair with European art films. Another recent French film that I can whole-heartedly recommend is Coline Serreau's Chaos, which took several years to cross the ocean to the U.S., but was originally released in 2001. Also Chocolat by Claire Denys, another quiet but piercingly accurate character study.

It is not a perfect film, it has flaws, the most obvious being the pseudo psycho babble that could have been achieved with greater effect by having said less, but having said it better. It is a romance, it is romantic, it is sexy, and it is a slice of life, their lives, a small part that keeps the rest of their lives from being without charm. There is no need to contemplate the past or their futures but the moments that make the present happiness complete. The film proves that sex between mature adults can be beautiful, and not bound by the petty mores of witless societies that demand sex take place between pnuematically enhanced teenagers and souless males who would not understand the rhythms of sex without a street directory. Nathalie Baye was 51 when she made this film and has an attractive body, but she has a great way of making herself erotically desirable. Any person that has never laughed, joked or cried during sex has not had much good sex. It is the casual and caring ease between the leads that demonstrates how sex can be imtimate and romantic and caring. The people who call this movie cold have looked at it from the director's eyes and have failed to capture the warmth of the two leads. The title, I think is in the French style of ironic (a word missing from the American dictionary) rather than the British sense of the word. While the British treat irony like a Shakespearean tragedy the French equate it more with the "little death" and regard it more as humour tainted with pathos. The French idea of tragedy is to leave the ending out of movies, but perhaps I am over using irony here. If you have 80 minutes to spare to think about the relationships in your own life, then this little movie just might help you explore your own heart a little more. And remember a movie without flaws is called, "Looney Tunes."