"Eros" - Antonioni, Soderbergh, Wong

"Eros" -- This is a three part / three director art house trilogy movie is intended as a tribute to 92-year old legend Michaelangelo Antonioni.

The three segments can be seen as epitomizing contemporary Chinese, American, and European approaches to sex in cinema. The first segment, directed by Kar Wai Wong ("In the Mood for Love") about a Hong Kong courtesan with consumption, illustrates the current Chinese obsession with glamour. The basic concept is lifted from Greta Garbo's "Camille" (which uses the same Dumas fils source novel as Pucinni's "La Traviata") and the treatment is similar.

The second, directed by the estimable Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's 11 & 12) illustrates how uninterested current American moviemakers are in the erotic. It's a brilliant slice of comedy starring Robert Downey Jr. as NY ad man in 1955 and 70-year-old Alan Arkin as his bored psychiatrist. Together, they invent the snooze button on alarm clocks. Downey, despite all his troubles, remains the American actor I'd pay to hear read the phone book.

Antonioni's own segment conclusively proves that older is not better when it comes to directing naked lady movies. We do see once again how Europeans find pseudo-philosophical dialogue sexy, for reasons that aren't clear to me. In France, to get a college degree, you have to write off the top of your head in a few hours a glib essay on some philosophical topic, so the ability to generate metaphysical cafe chit-chat is a useful signal of one's academic credentials, but why do Italians fall for it too?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer