Benutzerrezensionen

An extremely articulate and well-observed film from Wayne Wang, about what it means to have power - financial power, sexual power - and how shallow this power truly is, especially when it's detached from anything resembling true involvement, genuine passion. Both characters are obsessed with The Game, and they are both very good at it. Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker are both superb, letting us see enough of their characters' inner workings to completely understand them without showing too much, losing the edge. Each has what the other thinks he/she needs, and the film is basically a discourse on negotiation - what you will give up to get what you desire? Issues of control are central to the theme, and the cool thing is, both characters know it and they get off on that more than the actual sex itself.

In the above mentioned movie it always seemed strange that a really rich and handsome guy resorted to a hooker, albeit a real knockout one? Now we see a possible scenario that might make the plot not just a fantasy. A "Dot-Com." millionaire, with the required "nurd-ness" uses his economic power to feed his...well I guess fantasies and the story results are pretty good. They are at least more realistic than the sterile grunting that most current movies use as "sex scenes". Hollywood does violence beyond scale, but they do "sex" in the taboo filled lock-ups of censors and religious heresies. A director takes a daring chance into these forbidden areas and he is either eviscerated or beloved. For this movie there has been some of each. I don't think it deserves either. I think the movie making is a bit lame but the story and the attempt at reality deserves credit where due. I wonder how "The Postman Always Rings Twice" would have been if it had been done this boldly? Rhetorical questions seem to serve little purpose but I wonder how this movies got to be "R" rated and "Midnight Cowboy" was rated "X"? A question for another time perhaps? This movie is not in the class of "Midnight Cowboy", but it is pretty good and should be seen.

I like this film for what it is. It's really erotic. And it's very very hot. But I'm a sucker for endings, and without spoiling - I have to say I was a little bit disappointed. Don't get me wrong, this is great independent filmmaking, but with a little more guts, and a little more detail of the human condition - and all of it's dysfunctions and twisted little habits - this film might have been a landmark.

Ancient script. Man needs the physical stuff. Man hires dancer or prostitute. Man falls in love with her. Man in crisis mode.

This movie lacks a bundle on the character development's front. And the passion between Richard and Flo doesn't really fly. The elements are there to make a good movie, but Wayne Wang seems to be unable to put the magic touch to it.

Molly Parker and Peter Sarsgaard are doing a fine job as Flo and Richard.

You can easily skip this one.

Out of 100, I gave it 73. That's good for **½ out of ****.

Seen at home, in Toronto, on October 18th, 2002.

What is The Center of the World? It could be: the country of Ecuador, it could be the White House or the United Nations, it could be that spitball that always landed on the globe in your junior high school's history class, or it could even be where man likes to invade his taste buds from time to time. It is also the new film by Director Wayne Wang. `The Center of the World' is about lonely young millionaire who hires an exotic dancer to spend the weekend with him in Las Vegas. The film does focus on topics such as: masturbation, isolation, lesbianism, prostitution, and desperation. No! This is not a documentary of strip club regulars. At times 'The Center of the World' did receive the center of my attention; but at other times it was way off its mark. *** Average

At the risk of sounding like a pervert, I must give this movie a bad review primarily because this movie was promoted as explicit sex with a story, but it was more of a bland and boring story with a few erotic dancing scenes. All the actual sex was kept off the camea. While some people may like slow, drawn-out, simple drama storyline with bad dialogue, I was expecting an edgy erotic thriller in the fashion of "Basic Instinct". Needless to say I was greatly dissatisfied to find it did not meet any of my expectations. I could easily make a better movie myself. Maybe I will. For those who LIKE the slow dramas and don't mind nudity and implied sex, this is a decent idea of putting a computer geek looking for love and a below-average stripper looking for money together. Just don't make any expectations before and during the movie and you should not be annoyed by the non-climactic ending.

A digital camera does not a movie make but Wayne Wang didn't rely on avant-garde technique alone when he decided to revisit the basic boy-meets-girl story. He simplifies the problem by choosing two people with very little in common and then taking them out of their natural settings and putting them in the unreal world of Las Vegas. The man is a socially inept but financially successful engineer so typical of our times and his character is developed and portrayed very realistically by Peter Saarsgard in a role very different from what he played in Boys Don't Cry. He's got it down even to the careless dressing and awkward laugh. I know - I work in the Bay Area. Molly Parker is equally convincing as the drummer-by-day-stripper-by-night career woman who has such a cool and invincible air about her that it makes quite an impact in the few occasions when she does let her armor down.

It almost seems as if Wang has taken the Hollywood classic Pretty Woman and has decided to deHollywoodize it. And in that he has been quite successful. The graininess of the Blair Witch style digital camera coupled with innovative shots including unexpected close-ups follow no clichés. Equally cliché-free is the screenplay which follows a loosely linear narrative advanced primarily by the sexual encounters between a man and a woman who are placed in the near-equivalent situation of a desert island and come from different worlds. In this, one can discern shades of Last Tango in Paris, except that this movie is set in a more cynical time where love has been deconstructed and is not worth killing for. Sex becomes the center of their world but even as they escape into sex they cannot quite leave their personalities, their dreams, their insecurities behind and that is what ultimately saves them and their story from the mundaneness of a forgettable sexual encounter. Although they go into into the deal for purely selfish reasons - he desiring an escape from Internet porn and she looking for some extra cash - their encounter, like all good stories, becomes something of a journey of self-discovery.

Mention must be made of the attention to detail which makes the setting very believable. The soundtrack is eclectic and follows the local Californian club scene rather than big label network music. And the dialogue is very boy-girl-next-door rather than being made up of grand lines. However, this movie is not everybody's cup of tea. The lack of a discernable narrative in some of the scenes risks losing the viewer's attention. And there's no simple message or tying up of loose ends here. But those who can brave that and the graininess will be rewarded with a contemporary look at love in our times.

The movie was entertaining. I thought the woman was pretty hot, even though she had lots of freckles. The Vegas aspect was fun. It was actually pretty good. Could've been a lot better, and was kind of cheaply made. But definitely watchable.

Don't see it though. Not worth it

6 stars

This is an excruciatingly awful film - strike that - an excruciatingly awful video that has been transferred to film. If you can not afford film, Mr. Wang, PLEASE curb your ego and release it directly to video.

The quality of the picture is terrible and the "story" is twice as bad. The "film" revolves around two of the most vacuous characters I have ever had the displeasure of watching on screen: Richard, a socially retarded software millionaire who pays Florence, an empty headed but street-wise stripper, ten thousand dollars to accompany him to Las Vegas for a weekend. In those three days, Richard naively hopes to win this bimbo's heart.

Over the course of the weekend we are subjected to watching the homely Florence play mind games with the idiot man-child, Richard. Richard's only relationship with women is masturbating in front of his computer monitor (shown in a flashback), which demonstrates that he is easily manipulated and an extremely pathetic human being.

I won't spoil the ending for you, but it actually doesn't matter if he ends up with her or not. What matters most is, you've just wasted eight or ten bucks (depending on where you live) on a cruel joke played by Wayne Wang.

Wang doesn't introduce one character worth empathizing with or even relating to on any level. Are we supposed to feel sorry for this bumbling twenty-something millionaire? Oh, the poor little rich boy. Are we supposed to care about the self-debasing affected stripper who only cares about money? How can you worry about someone who doesn't concern herself about anything or anyone? You can't!

Again, I have to go off on the quality of this "movie." It's horrible! The entire film was shot on video and it doesn't even look like digital video. Some of the scenes were so pixilated my eyes had a hard time focusing on the screen - and, I thought The Blair Witch Project's quality was bad.

I love independent film, but this isn't film - it's video. A very, very, very bad video.

It's hard to find a truly erotic movie made in America. Most mainstream films have little sex/no nudity and a whole lot of violence. And what constitutes "erotic art" in films is made up horribly contrived, unbelievable Cinemax/Playboy movies. That lack any real heat and are amazingly unsexy and boring.

So a film like "Center of the World" is a rare gem. It actually is sensual, erotic and the participants in the sex scenes seem comfortable and actually engaged in what they are doing. The scenes do not come off as awkward or simulated. Which is the challenge for any film director. To make the audience believe what they are seeing is real.

What's special here is that a great actress who one would actually like to see do nudity/sexual material, has the lead female role. There's no body doubles here and Molly seems really comfortable with the nudity and explicit sex scenes. She looks absolutely gorgeous throughout the movie. And is not the traditional, cookie butter starlet that is churned out in a 1,001 Cinemax skin flicks.

Hollywood should make more of these films. Unfortunately, I think during this age of "sexual repression" in the arts, our natural human sexual needs will continue to be hidden from view on both the big and small screens.

An erotic movie. Shot with a malfunctioning hand-held digital camera.

Okay, the producers and director will insist this was a study in color, with mood-enhancing black-and-white, blah, blah, blah, ad infinitum through the drudgery of the commentary I just waded through, ooh horrors why do I do these things to myself?

You shoot a picture Man Loves Woman, and you feel the need to go extremely artistic and we have to sit and watch as the color spectrum goes slightly haywire like on a broken TV set and you think it's high art?

The joke is on the reviewers who are simply wowed by this. The punchline is indeed, low budget movie, sex as selling point, instant major audience cause the girl IS mesmerizing, maybe for real they only had broken equipment, which is suddenly A+ cos how arty it is gonna seem? And think about the profits!!! They're flogging a dead camel and making it walk!!

Okay, so I'm kidding, but it could just as well be true. It looks like it has been shot with a faulty camera. And that says it all!!

Except that freckle-faced red-haired supple lissome lean and lovely Molly Parker makes the whole thing worthwhile.

(but for those of you who go for Carla Gugino, hoo boy...)

This movie was one of the worst that I have seen in a while. If it wasn't for all of the naked women in the movie, I would have walked right out of the theater. There was absolutely no plot, it wasn't shot very interestingly and it was plain degrading to watch. If you have any urge to see this movie because it is "about" a dot-commer in SF, wait until it is out on video. There is hardly any reference to the industry and there are even less shots of San Francisco. Truly a terrible movie and a waste of money.

I had many feelings upon watching this movie. First, from reading other IMDB member descriptions of the film, I had expected something totally unwatchable and boring. However, that was not really the case for me. I thought The Center of the World was well-acted; I felt empathy for the two main characters, Richard and Florence. I thought most of the dialogue was written thoughtfully and realistically. In terms of cinematography, the hand-held camera thing worked well for most of the film, but there were times it did get a bit tiresome too. Also, for a film where nothing much really happens, The Center of the World didn't seem overlong to me. Overall, I would say this movie kept me semi-engaged and interested.

But it also bothered me. What punched my buttons? First, I had a really hard time believing that the characters of Richard and Florence, who are portrayed as very emotionally literate people, would ever get involved in such a vacuous and emotionally unsatisfying situation. Perhaps Wayne Wang, Miranda July, and the other writers of this film's script knew people involved in a similar "relationship" as Richard and Florence. But I don't see pornography/strip clubs/stranger sex/etc. in such a clean light. As I see it, a great many people involved in these activities are doing so because of terribly painful childhood wounds (i.e. sexual abuse, huge abandonment issues, family shaming)and to portray, nay, to glorify Richard and Florence's characters in such a "clean erotic" way misrepresents to the reality of the strip/porn world. My concern here is that portrayals like this incorrectly glorify something that is really ugly. Having taught high school for three years and knowing how films such as this distort teenagers' perceptions of reality, I can just hear my fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year old students talking about how "cool" this film is, how like "real life" Richard and Florence are. And then I can see them wanting to go out there and be like Richard and Florence. "Oh, cool, dude, let's get a striper and go to Vegas." Yeah, cool. So, anyway, I was disturbed by this aspect of the film.

Another thing that really punched my buttons related to the portrayal of men's/women's gender roles in the film. There is much destructiveness, ugliness, and violence in this movie related to how men and women are represented. Under everything in this film lies the old steretypes that men basically buy women for sex. I think this is a very dangerous and violent way to portray male-female relationships, even if Wang was trying to do it in a tongue in cheek or not so serious way. The two scenes that really disturbed me the most with respect to this issue were the one where Mel Gorham's character, Roxanne, came to the hotel room and the scene near the end of the film where Richard and Florence interact more "intimately." Without giving away the plot, I just thought the whole scene with Roxanne and Florence reeked of male hatred. Was this the purpose of that scene? And after Florence and Richard's final night in the hotel, I felt truly sorry for Richard's character. What's gives with Florence's character? Is she supposed to be behaving cruelly just for fun? Why did she have to "play by the rules", as she always said? In light of her apparent emotional literacy, it seems highly unlikely to me she would behave in this way (unless she had some very serious issues with men).

A last criticism: The title of the film doesn't really work for me. It seems too significant, too grandiose for the way the film is made. And that makes me realize that although the I find the characters and dialogue in the film interesting, there's something not well-thought- out, something sloppy about the whole thing. The Center of the World just seems really pointless and silly at the end. So I don't know what an appropriate title would be.

Anyway, that' my two cents worth.

I've seen a lot of movies with the Internet as subject matter over the past few years, and the surprising size of the audience I sat with for this one leads me to believe that my interest is shared. The Center of the World was supposed to examine sexual relationships in the age of the Internet, according to this Salon article:

But Salon got it all wrong; the touchy subject of online pornography was only fleetingly alluded to, and what I got instead was a slightly more realistic version of Pretty Woman. Thankfully, Sunday's episode of Futurama did a much better job on the pornography issue!

Alright, so I waited 90 minutes for something to happen in this movie. I mean, I was hoping for a cool plot twist or something. Instead, I was just bored. I was trying to like at least one of the characters, but the main characters were shallow and annoying. The supporting players weren't around long enough for the audience to get to know them. I'm glad I had a free pass to the movies when I saw this, because I'd have been upset if I shelled out 9 bucks for it.

riprock's review is right on. The guy is looking for a good time but in the sense of a somewhat naive dude who's not used to interacting socially. The woman is looking to be comfortable in her job and not having to interact too socially. Yet they are both drawn into each other by their commonality.

Not a film for everybody. Not raunchy enough for the porn freaks, not graphic enough for the art freaks, too graphic for the love story freaks. We're all freaks.

This movie hits a perfect balance in showing the two sides of love, lust, and lingering love.

Great photography, pixillation, mood inspiring, cold -- yes but that's part of the story. Bringing the Carlo Gugino character just at the right time, sent this movie over the edge as as superb look into modern psyches.

This is not a sexy movie. it's a relationship movie. but not just of man <-> woman, but of person <-> person. It's deeper and more personal than many of you think. that's why you don't like it, find it uncomfortable. You see yourself, it's lonely, it's scary, it's fun.

I

I've followed the career of Wayne Wang for several years. His two New York movies (Smoke and Blue in the Face) maybe probably his best. The Hong Kong epic Chinese Box worked very fine for me, even though the subtitling of the Chinese dialogues was very erratic in the copy that was projected and edited in video here in Mexico. Therefore I was surprised to find this film in the video shelf and very eager to watch it. More when I found out Paul Auster collaborated in the story (he was a key participant in the two N.Y. movies afore mentioned).

It was a sure disappointment. In this story about a computer geek that sort of falls in love with a stripper, Wang forgets that the key point in a dramatic story is that the viewer identifies or at least cares for any of the players. But as soon as the geek meets the girl and offers her money to go for a few days to Vegas things start to drift out of context. The erotic imagery are the center of this world and they work as good as in the best Zalman King soft porn. But this is a Wayne Wang movie, and his characters always should be, and work for that matter, above those issues.

But they don't. The video-cinematography is beautiful, full of interesting close ups and moving camera effects. The film structure is full of flashbacks in black and white that reconstruct the first meeting of the characters in a sort of convoluted manner, becoming tiresome as the movie advances.

There are few strong moments, like the almost cameo by Carla Gugino as a damaged woman that end up not paying off. It's a difficult movie to watch if you expect any rapport with the characters. The ending is an unconclusive as the rest of the film. Trying to leave an open finale, the conclusion seems vague and pathetic.

To the best of my knowledge "The Center of the World" was shot on a digital camera. If this is the case, then that was a very wise choice for the material and tone of the same. "The Center of the World" is an intellectual adult's version of "Pretty Woman" (although, I couldn't help but notice a few similarities to Egoyam's "Exotica"). On the most basic level is where we leave "Pretty Woman", however. This film is definitely not for all tastes, but that would be a loss for those folks. "The Center of the World" has a lot to say about human sexuality, loneliness, and money and the simple link between them in this modern-age. It's about the loss of human contact and connection between people in the same room; it's about perception and misjudgment. Additionally, there's a very primal ritual running through the sex scenes in this film that speaks volumes about human evolution versus technological evolution. There's a lot here and I don't want to ruin it for anyone by continuing my rant.

A lightweight riff on Bertolucci's magnificent "Last Tango In Paris" finds a couple strike a deal whereby he will pay her to spend three nights in Vegas with him. Well, a holiday in Vegas even if you have to do a bit of sexy dancing for someone? Who could say no? The problem here is that the main character of the film pretty soon establishes itself as Las Vegas. Who cares where that ice cube is going? I wanna see The Stratosphere! And there is the problem...despite some half hearted attempt to inject modernity into it all by making him a computer wizard (though this is never really explored from the cyber sex angle) and despite the washed out colour of the DV flashbacks and some arty shots it is really hard to care. A couple of questions are raised but never answered and the whole film teeters on the verge of being interesting but never engages the viewer. Stil there are some great shots of Vegas!