‘Erotique’ elicits heavy groaning, not moaning

‘Erotique’ elicits heavy groaning, not moaning

Film compilation fails to satisfy expectations

By Lael Loewenstein

Daily Bruin Staff

A rather uninspired attempt to showcase erotica from the female
perspective, Erotique is a collection of three short films directed
by women of different nationalities.

The first of these soft-core romps is entitled Let’s Talk About
Sex, directed by the American independent filmmaker Lizzie Borden (
of the acclaimed Working Girls).

In Let’s Talk About Sex, a frustrated Los Angeles actress,
moonlighting as a phone sex operator, takes a special interest in
one of her clients when he invites her to share a sexual fantasy,
which is presented in graphic detail. When she senses he has fallen
for her, she tracks him down and seduces him, only to leave without
giving her name. Supposedly empowered by this experience, the
actress finally gets a job.

The second film, Taboo Parlor, is directed by Monika Treut from
Germany. Treut’s film centers on two lesbians in Hamburg who decide
to pick up a man one night as an experiment. Once they’ve brought
him back to their apartment, the three engage in a menage, the
women forcing him to submit to their desires. As a parting gesture,
they blow up his car.

The third film, Won Ton Soup, from Hong Kong director Clara Law,
is perhaps the most visually interesting. A young
Australian-Chinese man and Chinese woman explore intimacy by
experimenting with different sexual positions as inspired by the
Chinese equivalent of the Kama Sutra. But she ultimately ends their
relationship because of apparent cultural differences.

With a glut of sex in movies directed by men, it’s refreshing to
find such films about sex made by women. But that alone does not
make them good films. The mediocre acting and amateur-like
directing is compounded by scripts so confusing the viewer is only
left baffled as to the motivations of the characters.

Each of the women in these films asserts her feminine strength
by sexually manipulating, and ultimately leaving, her respective
male partner. Isn’t that just as unenlightened and just as much of
a cliché as men who use women? Perhaps this film compilation
will inspire other women filmmakers to make some more effective
erotica, but this Erotique is more likely to elicit snores than
moans.

FILM: Erotique. Directed by Lizzie Borden, Monika Treut and
Clara Law. Opens today.