Erotique

Four directors (Lizzie Burden (USA), Monika Trent (Germany), Ana Maria Magalhães (Brazil) and Clara Law (China)) present four low budget short stories about eroticism. The American one ('Let's Talk About Sex') is about a girl who participates in auditions trying to have a chance as actress, and works in an agency of sex by phone. She gets horny with a client and meets him. The German one ('Taboo Parlor') is about two lesbians having one night stand with a handsome man. The Brazilian one ('Final Call') is about a young teacher moving from the country city of Barbacena to Rio de Janeiro by train, to get a plane to New York. She is almost raped by two guys and saved by a photographer. Then she has an affair with her rescuer. And he Chinese one ('Wenton Soup') is about the cultural differences between a Chinese young woman, who live in Hong Kong, and a young man descendant of Chinese, who lives in Australia. The guy, in accordance with the definition of his uncle, looks like a banana: yellow outside, white inside. I do not like this type of tales. The Brazilian one, for example, is completely fake: spoken in English, many tourists landscape of Rio de Janeiro, the sexy and with a very Brazilian type Claudia Ohana naked, all of these together seems to be a 'fake product for exportation'. I do not like porno, but I believe would be better off the viewer spending time watching X-rated movie than this type of movie, which has lots of insinuation of kink sex and no penetration. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Erotique"

One of the very few film anhtologies directed exclusively by women: unfortunately, only one of them, Lizzie Borden, manages to tell a story in the allocated (short) time. Her episode is funny, relatable, and sensual (***) The second segment starts with an intimate lesbian wake-up scene involving the sublime Camilla Soeberg who sets the screen ablaze, but after that it goes nowhere...slowly (**1/2) The third episode is odd, incoherent and spoiled at the very start by a near-rape scene; it is also awkwardly filmed in English, when it should have been in Portugese (**). The fourth is the most "arty" and explicit, but also the most boring of the bunch (*1/2). The overall rating is hovering between a 5 and a 6 out of 10, but I decided to go with a 6 mostly on the strength of Borden's contribution.

Three story segments that have nothing to do with each other, 1 set in the USA, one in Germany and one in Hong Kong. Had its moments especially in the USA segment, but not enough of them and ultimately too bitty to be satisfying.

For the record, I saw the version that includes the Brazil segment. That said, I want to know why every segment is in English, despite most of them taking place outside the US. It's jarring to see Germans, Brazilians and Hong Kong people not speaking their own languages.

As for the movie itself, it's OK, not great. Lots of nudity but it leaves a lot of the sex up to your imagination. Neat seeing Bryan Cranston in an early role.

My version didn't include the Brazilian segment but I'm not especially interested in watching it since the other three segments kind of suck.

The American and German episodes are as bland and boring as they come, while the Chinese one is at least vaguely interesting since there's a minimum of character building. Not enough to redeem a flavourless movie anyway.