Investigating Sex

As a volunteer at the Denver Film Festival, I was given the opportunity to attend a screening of this movie tonight, and I am very happy to have done so. At times I think I was the only person in the theater laughing, but I found this movie hilarious, yet relatable. The ensemble cast has wonderful chemistry, including great performances by Alan Cumming, Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Robin Tunney and Neve Campbell. Though the film might seem farfetched, it is actually based on real events, and I especially enjoyed Robin Tunney's performance as a woman with a refreshingly healthy attitude towards sex. Neither a "virgin" nor "whore," she has slept with a few men, knows what she wants and how to get it, and rather than begging the man she goes to bed with to love her and marry her, she simply asks him not to analyze it to anyone, whether it lasts or not. Another special treat is a series of films-within-the-film, shot in black and white and made (apparently through a very complicated process) to look as they would have looked in the 1920's. A lovely character-driven film that is quite different from most things you will see these days. Go see this if you get the chance.

I was really hyped about Intimate Affairs. I mean, looking at the cast, there is a wide spread of reputable actors and actresses that I have loved or liked in one film or another. Dermot Mulroney, Neve Campbell, Robin Tunney, Alan Cumming, Terrence Howard, and Nick Nolte; they all have acting chops and I personally love Campbell and Cumming. I was let down, because this movie turned out to be just okay.

It was not great, nor was it bad, but it was pretty darn bland. The characters lacked the ability to entertain, and the acting was robotic. While I found the script choice interesting, it was dull and simple, which for this film they needed to make the script a little more complex and captivating. The ending was not the best way to go, and I felt as if all the stars did not try their hardest. This movie was a big disappointment for me, but it was enjoyable to watch, and I am glad I had the chance to see it, but I don't plan on seeing it again.

Anyone who had the pleasure of seeing this film doesn't know the meaning of the word "pleasure." What an inept piece of pompous trash! It is like Plato's Symposium for morons. Poor Julie Delpy looks like she hasn't a clue as to what she should do, and I take this as a sign of her intelligence. It's a great big piece of empty posturing.Tuesday Weld's accent is all over the place, but I guess we're supposed to think she's just an empty old bag with no substance. Or how about the trembling Neve Campbell who does one shtick throughout but we're somehow supposed to think she's wiser at the end. And then there's Dermot Mulr9ony with deep problems with his dad. Give me a break. What's amazing is that this kind of stuff is supposed to be sexy! Good God, hasn't anyone out there met anyone and had something happen between you?

Alan Rudolph is a poor man's Robert Altman with a Henry Jaglom production value–and yet he manages to entice excellent talent to his projects. His films have never fared well at the box office, and only two (Mrs. Parker and the follow-up Afterglow) received much critical acclaim. So how he managed to spend eight million dollars on this mess is anyone's guess. It was obviously shot (predominantly) in a single location, and the wardrobe and set decoration is hardly extravagant to have merited high budgeting. While likely scripted, it has all the discipline of a free community improv class. It's perhaps apt that a movie about masturbation should prove so masturbatory in its inception: the cast are allowed free reign to over-reach in almost every scene. There is no sense that the characters are true to the time frame portrayed on screen, and yet it is not completely pointless. Some of the improvisations work, and most don't, but there is some comedy to be had in the less over-wrought interactions. When it tries, it fails, but when it fails it sometimes triumphs. I only wish there had been more happy accidents–like the camera being in the right place to capitalize on the focus of the scene. It is sadly rarely so.

For a much better take on a similar subject see Joaquin Oristrell's Unconscious, instead. For a better use of an ensemble cast in a barely scripted acting exercise, see Nicholas Roeg's Insignificance. The only honest performance is Neve Campbell's, and the only subtlety is that of Terrence Howard. Nick Nolte seems like he's acting in two different movies, Alan Cumming deserves more camera time, and Jeremy Davies is completely against type.

Rudolph's greatest success is that this film released in 2002 looks like a 1970s European skin flic. I am probably over-crediting him, here. But the film has its moments. It's probably best to run in the background while you do something else and cross it off your list.

Pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, pre-frontal foreplay without substance or passion. Wooden acting by all except, Robin Tunney, who displayed unusual adeptness for her characters' misunderstood, Zoe. Neve Campbell wasted here as a rather prim and prudish, librarian type and Dermot Melroney as the rather starched, disillusioned and distant group discussion leader. It was to be a critical expose on the fragility of the Male orgasm and all its unreasonable expectations. It missed. It made men out to bestial, carnivorous, exploratory and very misinformed about women's bodies. On that note it was right on the mark. But from the very nature of the questions asked in the film it was obvious that the filmmaker was only expressing his limited scope and hoping to get a generous amount of love and money for his attempts at honesty apparently since he could not get a date.