Uma Relação Pornográfica

From its title, A Pornographic Affair might seem like the kind of film that might appeal to a 13-yr old boy just entering puberty. Its actually a very restrained and beautiful love story. The format of the narrative is in the form of interviews of Him and Her after the affair has ended. There is a mysterious fantasy which brought them together. We never find out, despite the interviewers repeated prodding, what that fantasy was that led Her to advertise and Him to read and respond to the advertisement.

Inevitably, the physical aspects of that fantasy don't matter because the two eventually move on to more conventional forms of sexual activity. Neither knows anything about the other - children, marital status, profession or age. Both are good people and inevitably the affair has to develop into something more. Both are charming and beautiful in their own way. Eventually they begin to like and be infatuated with each other.

Obviously, adult themes are explored in this film, but there is no gratuitous nudity or smut. It has a surprisingly human touch even though the route followed in a conventional relationship is inverted here.

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 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.

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.

This is one French movie which I am pretty sure will not run through an American remake. It has all the elements that attract the intellectual European movie goer, and all what is rejected by the typical American viewer. It is a love story with two characters, almost everything happens in just two places (a restaurant and a hotel room), drama is based on characters development, and eroticism is all but explicit. It is a love story, but it departs the usual romantic comedy pattern and escapes the cheap happy end that spoils that many American movies. Acting is superb, and actually the best part in the film, though it is sometimes too static, more Russian or East European style than French. At the end, you are left with a simple story of un-realized love, the message being that the imposed limits of communication according to which the heros decided to play decide their ultimate faith, and the faith of their relationship. Not too much, but decent cinema if you like the style and genre. 8/10 on my personal scale.