Eros Review
by Michael Dequina (twotrey AT gmail DOT com)June 29th, 2005
_Eros_ (R) ** (out of ****)
No matter what caliber of talent is on board, omnibus anthology pictures are almost doomed to be uneven affairs, and this collaboration between no less than the international dream team of Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Michelangelo Antonioni is no exception. Unified in theory by the concepts of eroticism and desire, only Wong's reliably lyrical lead-off segment comes out an effective and distinctively auteurist exploration of the central theme. Set in '60s Hong Kong, "The Hand" follows a timid tailor (Chang Chen) as pines over years for his most treasured client, a courtesan (Gong Li) at whose hands--literally--he had his first sexual experience. Beautifully shot and acted, this story expertly weaves an emotionally and erotically charged atmosphere that the next two segments are unable to sustain.
The mood is almost immediately shot to hell with the first frames of Soderbergh's middle chapter, "Equilibrium." This is not to say that this comedy about an advertising executive's (Robert Downey Jr.) increasingly oddball session with a psychiatrist (Alan Arkin) isn't without its laughs and amusements, largely due to the leads' go-for-broke enthusiasm. But the segment bears no discernible connection to what are supposed to be the unifying themes, and the antics build to a stale punchline.
"Stale" is definitely not the word to describe Antonioni's contribution, an unintentional gutbuster that plays almost like an overwrought parody of Eurotrash arthouse would-be erotica. From the get-go, in which our frequently topless heroine (Regina Nemni) chastises her husband (Christopher Buchholz) with dialogue along the lines of "All you care about is desire and acting on it," "The Dangerous Thread of Things" plays as ridiculously and pretentiously as its title. The couple stops at a waterfall in which two nubile young females bathe each other. The couple stops at a restaurant, where the wife drops her empty goblet on the floor for no apparent reason. The husband stops at the home of a buxom young woman (Luisa Ranieri), who warns him, "I hope you don't mind the chaos." Apparently he doesn't, for after she strips down and vigorously masturbates for a bit, they finally do the nasty to some moany, English-language bom-chicka-wow-wow music. The married couple apparently split up after an unclear passage of time; the other woman dances joyously on the buff while completely nude before lying on the sand; the wife does a more somber dance while also in the buff, then finds the other woman lying there. But before we could have a porn-ready, hardcore sapphic climax, the film fades out. The meaning of all this? Who the hell knows, at least in an artistic or thematic sense; the only message I could glean is that at the ripe age of 92, Antonioni is, quite simply, one horny ol' motherfucker.
(c)2005 Michael Dequina
Michael Dequina
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