Sex — in many forms and, in at least one case, unsimulated — is heating up screens at the Cannes film festival, confirming the event’s reputation for taboo-busting fare.
About five films in the official selection alone have already shown enough nudity to mark them for mature audiences only, and one, Shortbus, by United States director John Cameron Mitchell, blurred the boundary between pornography and art with its actors engaged in real intercourse.
Other movies that have foisted flesh on the big screen included Summer Palace, a well-regarded Chinese contender for the Palme d’Or prize, the intriguing British flick Red Road, a revolting Hungarian movie called Taxidermia, and a tasteful French movie, Charlie Says.
Various other features filled with R- or X-rated images are to be found in theatres outside the main selection, among them The Exterminating Angels by French director Jean-Claude Brisseau — who was convicted of sexual harassment last December for having two of his actresses masturbate for him during auditions — and Princess, a Danish animation that makes bloody judgement on the porn industry.
Titillating or visually appalling scenes have long been a staple of the Cannes festival, which has a reputation for European liberalism and unconventional art to uphold.
Previous years have seen audiences subjected to sex-with-violence: Irreversible, with its realtime rape scene, or Trouble Every Day, which brings cannibalism into the mix.
Over time, directors have had to work harder and harder to make such provocations work as audiences become increasingly inured.
”Shock value evidently sells, though, and critics will always argue that the desire to shock has outweighed artistic integrity,” British movie trade magazine Screen International said.
In Red Road, a late sex scene shows all of the lead actress, Kate Dickie, as she receives oral stimulation.
But she said that was easier for her than preceding scenes where she is laid emotionally bare while fully clothed.
”I find sex scenes actually less intrusive than emotional scenes, because it’s just your body and it’s your physical self and nobody is getting in here,” Dickie said, pointing to her heart.
Shortbus is this festival’s most ”scandalous” film for sex. It starts with the explicit scene of a man performing auto-fellatio, and goes on to depict, or rather document, group sex, masturbation and S&M play-acting.
As one of the characters tours a real orgy held in a New York underground art space, she is told by the cross-dressing owner: ”It’s just like the ’60s, only with less hope.” The line captures the seen-it-all jadedness of both the performers and many of the viewers.
What’s telling in his movie, though, is that after the initial sex acts, the movie settles down into an exploration of loneliness that eschews gratuitous close-ups of genitalia for a finally stirring affirmation of our interconnectedness, whether physical or not. – Sapa-AFP