Touch Me

Australian auteur Paul Cox's entry into Regina Ziegler's Erotic Tales series is pretty underwhelming. Even its premise isn't handled as definitively as it should have been, ie. The protagonist is an artist's model played by Claudia Karvan who sojourns from her unsatisfying relationship for a weekend away and finds an awakening in her travel partner - and yet the movie makes clear that her partner at home is not inattentive or uninterested in her. She claims he told her she doesn't have the body to model, and yet when we meet him he can't keep his hands off the same body.

Therefore her motivations don't really make sense.

The other character is also not wanting for male attention, and does not appear unsatisfied when she gets it. Neither of the characters are hurting for erotic satisfaction, so why did they take their trip together?

When the climax (ahem) happens, it's hard to believe it. It gives us a good look at the beautiful Claudia Karvan's body, but we don't see too much of her pleasure.

It seems like a no-brainer that Karvan should have been dissatisfied or sexually repressed, and this climactic scene should have shown her really getting into it.

Neither is true, therefore both the story and its intended effects are neutered.

The excellence of the photography saves this film from utter failure. The camera ever so slowly roams along the elegant body of a beautiful woman, first while she is being heavily smothered in oil and massaged by her female friend and later, delicately sponged from head to toe with a soapy sponge. These are supposed to be titillating moments, and should be, but there is little warmth, little reaction, and fails to inspire.

The film to me seems unfinished, perhaps a fragment of something greater. It leaves me with a feeling of emptiness like the lives of the two women depicted.

There is virtually no story in the 30 minute offering. Two women escape to the mountains where they enjoy each others company, apparently disappointed with their male partners.

The so-called sensual scenes are interspersed with frolicking about on a trampoline and chasing galloping horses, and should I mention the constant arrival of messages on a big fax machine. Oh dear, what next?

A strange mixture this one. Happily the film is short.

German TV got a grab bag of independenlty minded directors from around the world to make a series of Erotc Tales; all the short films (about 25 minutes in length) are independent of each other. I have 2 favourites, one being Ken Russell's tale and this, Paul Cox's. Born in Holland but based in Australia, Cox is frustrating uneven but has been admirably independent, working along his own path ignoring what even Australia's small film industry has been doing. This story, "Touch Me" is damn sexy; I've always had a thing for Claudia Karvan, so seeing her give such a raw, uninhibited performance in this means I'm going to sit up and take notice, but this film has a very quiet message to tell... which made me feel sorry for myself; "If only I could turn my back on conventions and live by my own rules, like the characters in this play". Oh well. Erotic and a tad depressing if that makes sense... yet uplifting (spiritually that is, you dirty minded people). Hard to filnd but worth the look if you can track it down.

This movie emanates a very irrepressible erotic climate, I've never seen anything like it. The atmosphere is very exciting and the situation in which the two protagonists is very erotic. I voted this film with a 10 and maybe I've been too severe with it.