Eros

A compilation of three short films by three acclaimed international directors, Eros get worse and worse as it goes along. Though all three films deal in some way with aesthetic issues of love and sex, only the initial film - the one made by Chinese master Wong Kar Wai - actually succeeds in expressing a clear concept of sensuality, or any focused idea about the topic at hand. Steven Soderbergh's entry, while deftly entertaining for a half-hour or so, never fully adds up, and closes on a note of bemused apathy more than anything else.

And Italian legend Michelangelo Antonioni's film looks really amazing and features two lovely naked dancing ladies, but unfortunately makes no sense at all.

The Hand (d. Wong Kar-Wai)



I feel kind of like a middle school English teacher for saying this, but I think Wong Kar-Wai was the only kid in the class to understand the assignment. His 40 minute masterpiece The Hand says as much about repressed desire and smoldering lust as the other two guy's movies and the director's previous film 2046 combined. It's also perhaps the most dramatically satisfying and sophisticated film ever made about a handjob.

Zhang (Chen Chang) gets a job as an apprentice tailor, and his first assignment brings him to the apartment of high-class call girl Miss Hua (Gong Li). To ensure that he always remembers her, and values her as a customer, Miss Hua goes ahead and gives the young kid his first happy ending. The technique, however, works a bit too well, and Zhang winds up loving Miss Hua from afar over the course of years.

I won't spoil the end, but as he so often does, Kar-Wai manages to end the film on a note of extreme melancholy without seeming indulgent or manipulative. And, as in his last few films, particularly the brilliant In the Mood for Love, Kar-Wai's collaboration with cinematographer Christopher Doyle produces goregous, vibrant results.

Conveniently, The Hand is the first segment on the Eros DVD, so you could theoretically just watch it and then return the entire film to the rental store (or, if you're one of those, to Netflix). For the more adventurous, however, Steven Soderbergh's mediocre effort comes next.

Equilibrium (d. Steven Soderbergh)



A Mulholland Drive-style mindfuck conveniently packed into a 30 minute short is pretty much all Soderbergh's entry has to offer. The dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream structure leads to a seriously perplexing final shot, but does offer some neat little meta-touches, impressive black-and-white cinematography by Soderbergh (under his standard alias, Peter Andrews) and two solid, funny performances from Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin.

Downey Jr. plays an exhausted ad man, circa 1955, sitting in for a therapy session with Arkin's psychoanalyst. For some odd, unexplained reason, as Downey Jr. closes his eyes and describes a sexy dream he had about watching a redhead bathe, Arkin folds up a paper airplane and throws it at a pre-determined target outside.

Like I said, the dialogue is kind of funny (particularly a bit in which Arkin and Downey Jr. kind of spontaneously invent the snooze alarm) and I liked the look of the film, but it doesn't really add up to much. And the last final shot bugged me. It seems to hint at a larger meaning, as if Soderbergh had intended to get at something beyond just a peculiar, open-ended skit with some nice repartee. But I don't get what he's trying to say at all.

And speaking of me not getting what a filmmaker is trying to say, we come to the final short film in this little Eros trilogy. Michelangelo Antonioni's I'm a Revered and Extremely Old Italian Artiste So Fuck You if You Don't Get My Film

Oh, wait, I mean...

Il Filo Pericoloso Delle Cose (d. Michelangelo Antonioni)



That still's in black-and-white, but the film itself features beautiful color photography. Antonioni continues to work in long takes and graceful tracking shots that glide over craggy, uninviting landscapes. There are images in this film that are just wonderfully realized from a visual standpoint, iconic moments that could have come out of one of Antonioni's classic studies in alienation and emotional distress.

But Red Desert this ain't. Il Filo Pericoloso Delle Cose doesn't just avoid clear narratives in the usual Antonioni method, but studiously avoids any opportunity to engage the viewer on any level. It isn't just that there's no story...I think it's reasonable for a 30 minute film to work on a metaphorical or non-narrative level, if it's trying to get at something or has a point. But Antonioni's film is just frustrating and pointless, a journey into sexual obsession and infidelity that turns silly and overblown right when it wants to get really deep.

We open with a couple, Chris and Cloe (Christopher Buchholz and Regina Nemni), arguing. He yells at her to "get going," and she obliges, but they don't seem headed anywhere important. They walk around, in small towns and natural environments, bickering always, and then angrily part ways. He then meets up with another, equally beautiful, equally naked woman (Luisa Ranieri), and they have sex in a tower. Then, the two naked woman dance around on the beach. The end.

Oooooh, doesn't that sound cerebral and tastefully erotic? I mean, I don't know if Michelangelo has just finally succumbed to age or his own hype or whatever, but this movie is just ridiculous. At one point, Chris and Cloe sit down at a restaurant, and Cloe drops a wine glass to the ground. The act is done and filmed with intense significance, as if this image of a wine glass falling silently to the floor was the most important, deeply resonant image Antonioni had ever shot. But it's just a wine glass! Right? What's going on?