There was plenty of sex on the big screen in Venice this year, straight, gay, whatever. ‘Babygirl’, the second film directed by Dutch actress Halina Reijn, was spectacularly billed as an erotic thriller and provoked corresponding curiosity. Romy (Nicole Kidman), in her late 50s and CEO of a successful New York company, embarks on an affair with an intern 30 years her junior (Harris Dickinson). She has a perfect family at home, but she has no desire to have cuddly sex with her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas, modestly attractive with dyed hair) and prefers to watch porn.
Nicole Kidman throws herself into the role as unreservedly as her character into the dangerous affair, yet remains cool and aloof. It is about power and subordination, about the tension between secret, forbidden lust and the perfect façade in the family and in the office. The critics were enthusiastic about Nicole Kidman's bravura performance, for which she won the Coppa Volpi for best actress. Maria Wiesner wrote aptly in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that director Halina Reijn uses ‘the genre of the erotic thriller to speak of female self-empowerment’. But ‘Babygirl’ is also about the unsavoury side of feminine self-empowerment, when Romy's assistant blackmails her in order to climb the corporate hierarchy. Women are not always the better people.
In contrast, the Italian-American production ‘Queer’ manages without any women at all. Daniel Craig is determined to get rid of his macho image as James Bond. Director Luca Guadagnino's film was already considered one of the favourites of the festival in advance, but falls short of expectations. The title refers to the novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs, the literary guru of the Beat Generation. In it, the author describes his time in Mexico City in the early 1950s. Burroughs' alter ego William Lee spends his time roaming the city's pubs in a linen suit and hat, getting extremely drunk, looking for male sex partners and shooting up in between.
Eventually he meets Eugene (Drew Starkey), an American 30 years his junior, who reluctantly accepts his advances. The drugs and the constant boozing are pretty boring in the long run. What the film does not address is Lee's colonial arrogance. Money plays no role for the American sex and drug tourist in cheap Mexico. The country and its politics are of no interest to him whatsoever. Gay sex is staged extensively, yet the whole thing has something mechanically repetitive about it. You don't really get close to the characters, Daniel Craig remains strangely alien and absent despite his acting presence, as rigid as Nicole Kidman in ‘Babygirl’. Sex without emotions doesn't seem to make you happy after all.
After William Lee reads about the ultimate drug, yagé, which is extracted from the ayahuasca plant and can only be found in the tropical rainforest, he and his friend set off for South America. And sure enough, they find what they are looking for with an American herbal witch and have the trip of a lifetime. We see how they first vomit out their blood, then their hearts. Don't worry, it's all just hallucinations!
Guadagnino recreated Mexico City and the jungle in the Cinecittá studios in Rome, a backdrop that is tiring in its evident artificiality. For hardcore fans, there are two edited versions with a length of 200 and 150 minutes respectively. In Venice (Grazie a Dio!) the shortest one was shown at 135 minutes. When you think of ‘Call Me By Your Name’ and ‘Bones and All’, you wish that Guadagnino would make his next film with Timothée Chalamet again.
Confused Feelings
The French film ‘Trois amies’ (Three Friends) is also about sex, but above all about confused feelings. Emmanuel Mourat has made more than a dozen films as an actor and director and is regarded as a master of talking about love. Outside of France, he is only known to cinematic insiders. That could now change. In ‘Trois amies’, Mourat brings together the cream of younger French actors, whose ironic and elegant dialogue is a pleasure to follow. Camille Cottin, Sara Forestier, India Hair, Grégoire Ludig and Vincent Macaigne play 2.5 couples who are dissatisfied with their (love) lives. Joan (India Hair) is dating Victor (Vincent Macaigne), who wants to move with her into an idyllic little house in the countryside. It starts to get too much for her and she hints that things can't go on like this. Victor, deeply affected by her rejection, gets drunk and dies in a car accident.
Rebecca (Camille Cottin) is living with Éric (Grégoire Ludig), but suffers from the routine of the relationship and makes contact with the attractive painter Stéphane. She is unaware of Éric's secret affair with her friend Alice (Sara Forestier). It is a great pleasure to watch how the couples juggle their feelings and relationships, and how the audience knows more than the emotionally confused characters do.
The way Emmanuel Mourat stages these love entanglements is light and elegant, the dialogue sounds authentic and unpretentious. As a viewer, you enjoy the urban landscape of Lyon with its riverside promenades along the Saône and Rhône. A piece of intelligent cinema that came away empty-handed at the awards ceremony.
The characters in ‘Kjærlighet’ (Love) by Dag Johan Haugerud are less confused, but certainly complex. ‘Love’ is the second film in a trilogy, the first part of which, “Sex”, screened at the Berlinale, where it won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, among others. For the 60-year-old Norwegian, who has made a name for himself primarily with novels and screenplays, this is only his third film as a director. Haugerud cites Krzysztof Kiéslowski's Three Colours trilogy from the 1990s as the inspiration for his films.
Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig) works as a urologist in the oncology department of an Oslo hospital, and her friend Heidi introduces her to a divorced neighbour who has two daughters. Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen) is a male nurse on the same ward as Marianne. When he can't sleep, he takes the ferry there and back and looks for interesting men nearby on Grindr.
Haugerud accompanies his characters in Oslo in the summer and lets them talk at length about love and sex. The scenes are more discreet and less explicit than in ‘Babygirl’ or ‘Queer’, the conversations more sophisticated and intelligent. It is about the fundamental question of what the two protagonists, the unmarried Marianne and the gay Tor, expect from life, how they organise their erotic and emotional relationships. ‘Love’ begins quietly, gains increasing depth and ends in an atmosphere in which the characters embark on new experiences where different life plans stand side by side on an equal footing.