Paris, France

The acting out of the private fantasies, always a titillating idea, mainly because of the inherent risk involved, is the central theme here. Some openly sexual scenes and some even more open sex talks are the highlight of the movie. Acting is great. It gets too artful and cerebral (read loses reality) by the end.

A movie that belongs with 'The Lover' in the too short list of good erotic films, the real, present-day scenes are better than the fantasy scenes. It has lots of interesting dialogue too, for those paying attention to the dialogue: 'Sometimes, I can't tell the difference between f**king and fighting' said by one male star to another, is a line I've never forgotten. Makes for interesting discussions with men, once we're in the mood for discussing.

Very much an acquired taste, Paris,France has so much to offer the literate viewer. The film would be best enjoyed not by movie buffs but by critical theory students and their professors. They could even dedicate a course to it alongside seminars on commodity fetishism and Madonna. It challenges many assumptions about what is acceptable on film and was quite subversive in its time for showing graphic scenes of homosexual and heterosexual sex. The title itself seems like a self-conscious dig at Paris,Texas, as if to draw attention to its pretentiousness as art-house fare. Although the film is pretentious in many ways, it has a devilish charm and an offbeat, edgy atmosphere that makes it stand out from the crowd.

What the characters do and their responses are all completely unreal. Everybody dives off the deep end with an enthusiastic abandon which made me wonder how they'd lived to be as old as they are. Meanwhile the dialogue is the sort of terrible stuff that can come only from a sophomoric novelist, stuff real people who keep journals might write in them, but that not even they ever would say aloud.

I read one comment someplace claiming this is a comedy. I've always thought I had a sense of humor. I like to laugh as much as the next fellow. Still, that this film is a comedy never occurred to me. The only comedy it contains is the comedy of the inept.

1 out of 10.

I found this movie fascinating. The physical and verbal interaction between a complex young woman writer and four hetero-, homo-, or bisexual men provides the framework of a hyperfiction about writing and publishing. Preoccupied with the erotic, the writers seem to be latter-day versions of Anais Nin or Henry Miller, and the movie takes us through black-and-white flashbacks into the woman's version of a fantasy "Paris" where she has a sadistic relationship with a man who is a wretchedly bad poet/pop-lyricist but an animalistic never-to-be surpassed lover. The acting in the "real" world of muted dusty color is superb; though the four principals engage in frank sexuality, this is by no means a dumb sexploitation movie. Sexual activity, whether enacted or spoken about, is a way of exploring characters of great complexity. This is intellectual erotica of the kind that rewards repeated viewing.