Nude Area

Was browsing for something to watch when this popped up. The title certainly got my attention. I decided to tune in for a few minutes. It became a bit hypnotic in the way it held my attention. There is NO DIALOG in this movie, yet the long looks exchanged between the young, attractive leads told volumes. Shot on location in Amsterdam, the film is broken in to several chapters which sort of reflect the story arch of the two women first noticing each other on a train, meeting and coming together. There are a couple of locker room scenes, but the nudity is not gratuitous. And while not a true lesbian love story in any traditional sense, there were moments that border on erotic and certainly are sexually charged. This is a talented director and I applaud the attempt at something different. I saw shades of Nicolas Refn and a whiff of David Lynch. Overall, I was surprised how much I liked it. If you can get past the lack of verbal dialog, maybe you can too.

Two young women look at each other a lot. Nothing happens. They stand nude next to each other in the gym showers many times. Nothing happens. They watch each other combing their hair several times. Nothing happens. They sit next to each other on the bed. Nothing happens. They almost kiss several times, but they never do.

This is a ridiculously pretentious and boring movie about two women who are too much in love with themselves to be able to engage, love, or have sex with anyone or anything else. They are too sexy for anyone else. I had to play that "I'm too sexy" song by Right Said Fred after watching this goofy movie about two perfect women who can only love themselves, and nobody else.

Risk-taking in the sense of attempting to convey storyline and character development without any dialogue, but through expressions and other non-verbal interactions between the 2 leads. I thought it was quite well done, although it does require some thinking and somewhat subjective assessment in some cases to decode the intent, so if that's not your bag when watching a movie then this might not be for you. If you are, then you'll find Nude Area quite rewarding. There's also a theme expressed in the movie around how we can be slave to certain paradigms of attractiveness and beauty and how these can set expectations in a cross-cultural sense. Again, this was very well done.

You may know "Room in Rome" which is a very talkative film (apart from starring two women in a single room, being naked most of the time). Which sets it apart from this one, that also has 2 women who are attracted to each other but also contradict that feeling with what some may call despise at times. Others may call it "teasing" which is a sign of affection of sorts.

Whatever you want to call it, the characters/actors are not calling it anything. Because as my summary suggests (if you haven't read about it already), the movie is silent in that regard. And I was almost hesitant to watch this, because the only audio option I had was "German" on the menu of the disc and I knew this wasn't a German production. But as I did start watching it and realizing this would not future any dialog, I could concentrate on the visual aspect of it. Apart from different locations and a few other naked individuals running around, this is capable of telling the (love) story of two persons that seem to be made for each other (no pun intended).

Having said that, this may feel like a bore to quite a few people, especially when the pace is as slow as it is here. Whatever you may think of it, it is beautiful to watch (not exciting or explicit mind you and doesn't need to be)

In Amsterdam, rich white girl Naomi and poor Middle Eastern girl from the wrong neighborhood, Fama, meet at the nude of a female-only sauna. This begins a summer of flirting, gamesmanship, and emotional manipulation for this lesbian coupling.

There are chapters and there is no dialogue.

This is a failed experiment. Also I failed this movie. It is both. After about twenty minutes, I realized that there is not going to be any dialogue and I got bored. I ended up fast forwarding most of the movie. I failed, but the movie also failed to keep my interest. Even silent movies have text to advance the plot. The plot is too thin for that and the chapter headings do very little. This is an inventive way to allow two non-acting models to lead a movie, but that's not enough.