Pity the poor reviewer who exhausts his breath exhorting his fellow
moviegoers to take a chance on foreign or independent films--only to have
them take his advice and check out The Loss of Sexual Innocence. In
art-movie terms, this hodgepodge of pretty pictures and laughable symbolism
is pretty much an extinction-level event: It's the kind of stinker that
steers unwary viewers clear of arthouses for life.
Which is unfair for many reasons--not the least of which is that The
Loss of Sexual Innocence can get megaplex bookings because it's hooked
up with a name distributor, Sony Classics, while better movies drift around
unnoticed like lost planes without a runway. And it's clear that the only
reason a name distributor picked this up is because it came from a name
director, Mike Figgis; had a couple of mid-level stars, Julian Sands and
Saffron Burrows; and had enough nudity to make it marginally sellable. Even
as pretentious as the title is--it reeks of nickel-beer night at a poetry
slam--it'll at least prick up your ears on MovieFone. But that's what makes
the whole thing so frustrating: seeing art-movie distribution governed by
the same decrepit considerations that clog the megaplexes.
The Loss of Sexual Innocence seems meant as an emptying of
writer-director Figgis' notebook, a grab-bag of story fragments, images,
and dream sequences presented as the jumbled thoughts and memories of a
British filmmaker (Sands). That the movie starts off without a plot is its
most striking feature--the mood of languid disconnection and erotic
anticipation is initially tantalizing, and Benoit Delhomme's sepia-toned
camerawork is impressive. However, after a series of self-contained tidbits
that are less notebook entries than wastebasket scraps, the movie
eventually whittles down to parallel (awful) storylines: Sands' venture
into unspoiled Africa with a film crew, and Adam and Eve's movement through
paradise toward original sin.
Did I mention the twins separated by nuns? The dream sequence in which
Sands' wife finishes the ironing in one room and commences stripping
onstage to a jazz combo in the next? The Nazis with snarling dogs who chase
Adam and Eve into the arms of paparazzi beneath a giant neon cross? Each
squiggle is so vapid and sophomoric in itself that you don't care about
finding connections between them--the opposite effect of a difficult,
deliberately mystifying work like Kieslowski's The Double Life of
Veronique (a likely influence), whose patterns and themes resonate more
each time you watch it. By contrast, Figgis' ideas tend to boil down to
fortune-cookie stuffers like "nature good, man evil."
Figgis made one great movie, Leaving Las Vegas, amidst an
all-but-unbroken string of windy misfires, and one suspects its source
material kept the writer-director on track for once. Ironically, the
success of that focused, controlled film got him the clout and the genius's
mantle to make something this awkwardly self-indulgent--for all its
posturing, it looks and sounds like the gauzy thesis of a trust-fund
dilettante. Unlike a lot of better art movies you won't get to see, though,
at least it's playing in local theaters--which probably has a lot to do
with its title. If smaller distributors learn to play this game, steel
yourself for Grand Sexual Illusion, The Third Sexual Man, or
Taste of Sexual Cherry.