And yet none of that is relevant. What is relevant is that I did not find the movie erotic. It tells the story of a virginal young woman (Carre Otis) who is hired as an international lawyer, leaves on the next flight for Rio de Janeiro, and there meets a man and woman (Mickey Rourke and Jacqueline Bisset) locked in a contest of psychological control. By the end of the film Otis will have been mentally savaged and physically ravished by Rourke and others, at first against her will, I guess, although she puts up what only her mother would consider a struggle.
Details in the opening scene almost invite us to snicker. Can we believe that Otis, who looks about eighteen, has graduated from law school, mastered three or four languages, and spent eighteen months with “a major Chicago law firm” before being hired on the spot by a top New York firm that puts her on the next plane to Brazil? Hardly, since in the few scenes where she is required to talk like a lawyer, she speaks like someone who is none too confident she has memorized the words correctly. Can we believe that Bisset is an international negotiator who wants to buy valuable beachfront property from Rourke? That Rourke is a street kid from Philadelphia who bought his first house at sixteen, fixed it up, sold it at a profit, and is now one of the world’s wealthiest men?
Well, we can almost believe it about the Rourke character (what’s hard to accept is that anyone so rich would still be making money by actually doing things—like buying hotels—instead of simply ripping off the less wealthy through cleverness in the financial markets). But what I couldn’t believe was the chemistry between Rourke and Otis, whose passion is supposed to shake the earth but seemed more like an obligation imposed on them by their genitals.
Rourke has had chemistry before. Who can forget his relationship with Kim Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks? That he doesn’t have it here is largely because Carre Otis, beautiful and appealing as she is, brings little conviction to her role. It is hard for us to believe her character exists—but apparently almost impossible for her.
The screenplay by Patricia Louisianna Knop and Zalman King and the direction by King strain for a psychological complexity that simply isn’t there. Rourke is a man who cannot feel, they tell us, and so he lives through others—by arranging for Otis to have an affair with a strange man, for example. His untouchability has driven Bisset mad, which is why she “sent” Otis to Rourke in the first place—to see if he is incapable of loving all women, or only Bisset. Without the sex, this could be a Henry James novel (if it had been written by Henry James, of course).
I have seen, however, movies even more unbelievable than Wild Orchid which nevertheless stirred me at an erotic level (the original Emmanuelle was one, and 9 1/2 Weeks was another). Apparently the lesson to be learned here is that sexuality itself is not enough, nor is nudity or passion. What is required is at least some notion that the personalities of the characters are really connecting. Unless they find each other sexy, why should we?
Wing Commander
(Directed by Chris Roberts; starring Ginny Holder; 1999)
Jurgen Prochnow, who played the submarine captain in Das Boot, is one of the stars of Wing Commander, and no wonder: This is a sub movie exported to deep space, complete with the obligatory warning about the onboard oxygen running low. “Torpedoes incoming!” a watch officer shouts. “Brace yourself!” It’s 500 years in the future. If the weapons developed by the race of evil Kilrathi only inspire you to “brace yourself,” we might reasonably ask what the Kilrathi have been doing with their time.
Other marine notes: “Hard to port!” is a command at one point. Reasonable at sea, but in space, where a ship is not sailing on a horizontal surface, not so useful. “Quiet! There’s a destroyer!” someone shouts, and then everyone on board holds their breath, as there are subtle sonar pings on the sound track, and we hear the rumble of a giant vessel overhead. Or underhead. Wherever. “In space,” as Alien reminded us, “no one can hear you scream.” There is an excellent reason for that: Vacuums do not conduct sound waves, not even those caused by giant destroyers.
Such logic is of course irrelevant to Wing Commander, a movie based on a video game and looking like one a lot of the time, as dashing pilots fly around blowing up enemy targets. Our side kills about a zillion Kilrathi for every one of our guys that buys it, but when heroes die, of course they die in the order laid down by ancient movie clichés. The moment I saw that one of the pilots was an attractive black woman (Ginny Holder), I knew she’d go down, or up, in flames.
The plot involves war between the humans and the Kilrathi, who have refused all offers of peace and wish only to be targets in the crosshairs of video computer screens. Indeed, according to a Web page, they hope to “destroy the universe,” which seems self-defeating. The Kilrathi are ugly turtleoid creatures with goatees, who talk like voice synthesizers cranked way down, heavy on the bass.
Against them stand the noble earthlings, although the film’s hero, Blair (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) is suspect in some circles because he is a half-breed. Yes, his mother was a Pilgrim. Who were the Pilgrims? Humans who were the original space voyagers, and developed a gene useful for instinctively navigating in “space-time itself.” (Just about all navigation is done in space-time itself, but never mind.) Pilgrims went too far and dared too much, so timid later men resented them—but if you need someone to skip across a Gravity Hole, a Pilgrim is your man.
There are actors on board capable of splendid performances. The commander of the fleet is played by David Warner, who brings utter believability to, alas, banal dialogue. Two of the other officers, played by Tcheky Karyo and Prochnow, are also fine; I’d like to see them in a real navy movie. Prinze shows again an easy grace and instant likability. Matthew Lillard, as a hotshot pilot named Maniac, gets into a daredevil competition with the Holder character, and I enjoyed their energy. And the perfectly named Saffron Burrows has a pleasing presence as the head of the pilot squadron, although having recently seen her in a real movie (Mike Figgis’s The Loss of Sexual Innocence, at Sundance), I assume she took this role to pay the utility bills.
These actors, alas, are at the service of a submoronic script and special effects that look like a video game writ large. Wing Commander arrives at the end of a week that began with the death of the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Close the pod bay door, Hal. And turn off the lights.
Year of the Horse
(Directed by Jim Jarmusch; starring Neil Young, Ralph Molina; 1997)
Year of the Horse plays like This is Spinal Tap made from antimatter. Both films are about aging rockers, but Year of the Horse removes the humor and energy, portraying Neil Young and Crazy Horse as the survivors of a death march. There are times, indeed, when Young, his hair plastered flat against his face with sweat, his eyes haunted beneath a glowering brow, looks like a candidate for a mad slasher role.
The film, directed by Jim Jarmusch, follows a 1996 concert tour and intercuts footage from 1986 and 1976 tours. It’s all shot in muddy earth tones, on grainy Super-8 film, Hi Fi 8 video, and 16mm. If you seek the origin of the grunge look, seek no further: Young, in his floppy plaid shirts and baggy shorts, looks like a shipwrecked lumberjack. His fellow band members, Billy Talbot, Poncho Sampedro, and Ralph Molina, exude vibes that would strike terror into the heart of an unarmed convenience store clerk.