Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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377 of 386 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of hot sex but leaves you with an empty feeling... Beautiful DVD transfer, May 28, 2006
This was fun to watch yet at the same time rather disappointing (maybe depressing would be a better description). Fun if you go into it expecting sex, pretty faces and writhing bodies. But disappointing because there is little else besides. Depressing because the main characters appear so selfish, self-absorbed and are not in fact very likeable. Its main theme is about two emotionally immature individuals, learning rather late in life, the difference between lust and love. It's based on a short story by Tamara Faith Berger who also happens to be director Clement Virgo's wife. To its credit it tackles the lust vs love angle reasonably well.
For our protagonist Leila, life is one sexual encounter after another, free of emotional attachment, free of commitment, free of love. It opens with a naked Leila (the lovely Lauren Lee Smith) alone on the couch, masturbating while watching a porn video. There is no major dialogue until at least 10 minutes into the film and even then it is pretty banal if not trite, reflecting in a way the shallowness of these individuals. Director Virgo notes that he was trying to make a visual film as opposed to a talkie. And visually, it is beautifully shot. Leila goes to a party, meets David (Eric Balfour), with whom she feels an instant and mutual attraction. However he is with his girlfriend, Victoria (Polly Shannon). So she snares another lucky male whom she proceeds to bl__ and fu__ in the parking lot, in full view of David and his girlfriend, who naturally do the same thing, both couples more interested in the opposite pair than in their own partners. David of course is enthralled with Leila and hooks up with her. They have sex. Then they have more sex. And that's all they have. They don't really have a relationship. They don't communicate. They just copulate. Like rutting animals. Throughout the film, sex is depicted as mechanical, selfish and purely physical and although arousing, it is emotionally empty. The main impression I was left with was one of emptiness, hollowness and how sad these people were, physically connecting yet mentally and emotionally all alone. So much so that when David's ailing father whom he's been dotingly caring for dies, Leila cannot empathise, much less give solace. And neither is David of much help when Leila struggles with her parents' own breakup.
Luckless girlfriend Victoria (Polly Shannon) is, for me anyway, the most sympathetic character here. Of the three she is the only one with any insight into their relationship. She is also given some of the more memorable lines in the movie. During her confrontation with Leila, she warns him against David, "He's got intimacy issues. He needs a mommy," and more cruelly but to the point, "You can suck a guy's dick all you want. It doesn't mean he's ever gonna love you." She may be cast as the "other" woman but you can't help sympathising with her and thinking that she's better off rid of him. Virgo's need to have a "happy ending" where the characters come together after realising their love for each other is simply not convincing. It's hard to believe that these self-absorbed, narcissistic personalities could suddenly develop the insight to relate to someone, other than on a purely sensual level. The odd result is that, apart from the sex scenes, the movie when viewed as a whole, has a pretty depressing feel to it. Still, quibbles about the film aside, the sex scenes are not in the least bit disappointing. In fact, they are hot. Very much so. They are a lot more erotically arousing than in the bulk of porn material shot today which is so clinically anatomical as to no longer be erotic.
Although the DVD is unrated, it would most likely merit an NC-17. The sex scenes are as close to hardcore as you can get without it being X-rated. The missing elements are the money-shots and scenes of actual penetration. Otherwise everything else is there, right down to Leila playfully handling David's little thingie.
Lauren Lee Smith is gorgeous to look at and a very good actress. It took guts to do what she did here and I hope it pays off for her in the future. She should be in more films if only she could make time in between shooting "The L Word." In the commentary, director Virgo and Smith discuss how they first met when he directed her in her first lesbian scene in "The L Word."
The film has been beautifully transferred to DVD in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio (enhanced for widescreen TV). The film as we learn in the commentary was shot on Super 16mm so there is a slight graininess throughout as would be expected from this medium. Otherwise it looks gorgeous. Colors are vibrantly rich, black levels are accurately set, the golden summer palette that Virgo chooses for the film comes through handsomely. Sound comes in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby 2.0 Stereo. Dialogue is recorded at a very low level and is at times barely audible while the pounding music from the nightclub scenes are overwhelmingly loud. Rather like a porn video. I was constantly reaching for the remote to raise and lower the volume. There is an accompanying trailer, a photo gallery and of course the commentary by director Clement Virgo and Lauren Lee Smith who breaks into infectious laughter whenever she's asked to comment on her sex scenes. There is however no behind the scenes footage as advertised by Amazon. In the end, it may not count as a truly thought-provoking or even very credible film but it is arousingly enjoyable nonetheless. From the other reviews here, I take it most viewers will be seeing it for the sex. So, as far as the star ratings go: Five stars for the sizzling hot sex and for Lauren Lee Smith, three and a half for the movie itself.
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79 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It felt like a mediocre book I once read, but it was ultimately worth watching, July 6, 2006
* SPOILER ALERT: This review reveals key elements of the plot *
I liked it. But it didn't resonate with me like the first five minutes promised it would. When the movie began, I felt Leila, the anti-heroine, promising me, "You will relate to me."
At first I did. The blankness in her eyes as she went out to get what she both needed and hated I had felt myself too many times. When Leila and David were playing their cat-and-mouse game, the "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," they both seemed six years old: emotionally, they both are. Things began to get uneasy for me as the viewer.
The next seventy percent or so of the movie was filled with more sex than you can shake an, er, stick at, and nothing about that bothered me (especially Eric Balfour's totally nude body). When the relationship between Leila and David began to unravel, it became apparent to me that both of them likely were diagnosable borderlines, a personality disorder, and from that point, my hopes for a successful resolution to the movie were nil. Would they live happily ever after? Would they continue their cycle of alternating emotional abuse? How would the movie end?
Ultimately, the ending DIDN'T satisfy, as I was afraid it wouldn't, but then, wasn't the whole movie about NOT being satisfied?
Director Clément Virgo's use of harsh lighting, fast panning, and extreme closeups is very effective in this film. I would consider watching some of his other work, but I'm not sure whether I'd recommend this one on its intellectual merits. On its more visceral merits, however, it fits the bill almost as well as Larry Clark's Ken Park.
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55 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Utterly Unsatisfying, July 29, 2007
What can I say? I'm sure I bought this for the same reason everyone else did, and boy what a let-down.
Not to be ignorant or apathetic, I will focus my review on the film as a whole, not just the much talked about "graphic scenes of real sex" *cough cough*.
Allow me first to point out all the good things, then all the bad:
GOOD: The female lead is gorgeous.
That's it.
I guess the score has its charm too, but only cos it's always set to shots of her attractive face, so I'm gonna lump that all in as one bullet point.
NOT SO GOOD: Where do I start? Although the girl is very attractive, the scenes of her having sex are not in the least bit exciting, so she might as well not be.
The male lead is UTTERLY miscast, as a romantic lead, as an erotic lead, this guy totally misses the mark on ALL counts. And did I say romantic? Come to think of it, did I even say erotic?? Sorry guys but this film is a big fat neither. The much hyped "real" sex scenes are nothing short of completely pathetic, with not a single sexual encounter between the two "stars" (of which there are only two or three in the whole film) lasting more than a minute - literally, a 60 second minute. And these aren't artfully composed edited highlights, these are beginning-to-end realtime scenes. Think I'm kidding?
I can understand the first time they're together and there's all this sexual tension and electricity and lust (although as a viewer I just had to assume this, I certainly didn't feel any of it coming from the two actors) and the guy just can't contain himself, but this and every subsequent time they're together he finishes in less than a minute.
Which leads to another thing; throughout the film the girl narrates a contrived monologue sprinkled liberally with new-age promiscuous pleasure-seeking slang, this girl obviously thinks highly of herself sexually, yet the whole point of the film is that she becomes consumed by physically being with a man who cannot last more than 60 seconds in the sack. Even within the shallow parameters set by the film itself, this film fails to convince; and on any real level beyond that, it completely falls flat on its face. At one point he tells her he thinks about her all day and all night etc. etc. and I was left thinking "Whu?". There's just no passion between these two whatsoever, not as people, and not as bodies in a bedroom either. The simple and usually obvious dialogue is left to convince us of something entirely lacking in any other place we might look for it.
At one point after being with the guy the girl tells us, "I always thought a man loved with his c_ck", as if she now knows real love and a man who can love her with something other than his c_ck, after what? A one night stand with a guy whose only interest was to have sex with you??? How does that work?
Well, quite simply, it doesn't. Neither does the rest of this film. Not for a second.
If you're only interested in the real sex scenes, I can open a raincloud on your parade and tell you that the films entire sex scenes tally less than a few minutes, and are utterly uninteresting anyway. If you're interested in this film in a more holistic way, I can tell you that you're barking up an even wronger tree.
If this review is all over the place it is only cos the film itself is an equal mess.
STAY AWAY!
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