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Romance and History
Still Working on This
For the time being, here is a list of some very sensual, erotic movies you might want to see.
Romance
Starring: Caroline Ducey, Sagamore Stevenin, Francois Berleand, Rocco Siffredi
Director: Catherine Breillat
Production Company: Trimark Pictures
Running Time: 98 Min
Year: 1999
probably the most sexually explicit movie ever to hit the non-porn movie houses -- and probably the most critically-acclaimed sex movie since Last Tango in Paris. Directed by Catherine Breillat, Romance received a tremendous amount of praise when it was released, and made several film critics' Top Ten lists for 1999.
Claiming he loves her, but that he has lost his desire for her, Marie's boyfriend, Paul, refuses to engage in sexual relations, catapulting Marie into a desperate search for intimacy and erotic connection. Marie's escalating sexual journey tests her own physical and emotional limits, and, through an ironic twist-of-fate, eventually leads her to fulfillment.
Romance takes an intelligent, serious, complex look at the importance of sex.
Nine ½ Weeks
Starring: Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke
Director, Adrian Lyne; Production, MGM; Running time 118; Year 1986
Micky Rourke and Kim Basinger are Elizabeth and John--an art dealer and the man who pops into her life and takes over utterly--the leads in this steamy look into relationship that is as unlike the fairytale dream as any consensual love relationship could be.
It all starts with an innocent and accidental first encounter. There's heat between them and both are intrigued. After Elizabeth goes to the area they met, secretly hoping for another meeting, John pursues her with relentless and almost obsessive flair and romance.
Soon, Elizabeth is hopelessly caught in John's seductive embrace...a place she where she finds herself at turns uncomfortable and exhilarated. In 9 1/2 weeks, the two lovers run the gamut from light games to dominating, fanatical passion....neither one truly realizing what each needs and wants... both fervently wishing the other needs and wants the same.
Professionally filmed and superbly acted, this film has a lot to offer. It is steamy, sexy, and very hot...and yet interesting, romantic, and strangely sweet. The relationship and its progression are intriguing and tantalizing. The sex scenes are beyond erotic and very tastefully shown.
The only true drawbacks are that the film and the acting leave us with the idea that something is missing or left undone. This is not a love 'em and leave 'em-let's-have-lots -of-fun-and-then-part sort of film, and yet, it is not truly a love story. Instead, it is something in between...and I am not sure that anyone can truly fit it into either category.
Watch it for the surprising twists and turns and for the sweltering sex.
Wide Sargasso Sea
Starring Karina Lombard Claudia Robinson Rachel Ward Rowena King Martine Beswick Nathaniel Parker Michael York
Director John Duigan
Production Company Turner Home Entertainment: Running Time 100 Min Year 1993
This sexy, stylish adaptation of Jean Rhys' acclaimed and steamy novel is actually a "prequel" to one of the most respectable and staid classics of English literature, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre! However, in direct contrast to the icy, repressed England that Jane Eyre inhabited, "Wide Sargasso Sea" is set in the island paradise of Jamaica, circa 1850. Director John Duigan (Sirens," "Flirting") marvelously transports us back in time to a magical place in which repressed conflicts are brought tantalizingly and dangerously to the surface, conflicts between Europe and the islands, between England and France, and between man and woman.
Into the lush Blue Mountains of Jamaica strides reserved Edward Rochester. Unloved by his father and so financially cut off, Edward has come to the island in the hopes of proposing to Antoinette Causeway, a beautiful and economically secure young French woman with a tortured past. Sexual sparks fly immediately between the two, but Edward seems overwhelmed by Antoinette's unconstrained passions and the splendor of the island. Edward and Antoinette move towards the inevitable showdown, and those familiar with "Jane Eyre" may have some idea of the resolution.
The eroticism on display here is VERY sexy for a mainstream (albeit NC-17) release. Actually, there's a sexual tension that seems infused into just about every scene, whether it's of Edward and Antoinette making love underneath a waterfall or the two celebrating their wedding night indoors as islanders perform erotic dancing outdoors. And in breaking ranks with other high-budget releases, there is also the full frontal nudity of attractive leads Karina Lombard and Nathaniel Parker.
While the eroticism is certainly heady, it's the little touches that make "Wide Sargasso Sea" a very good motion picture. For example, there's an amazing shot of a stately dance, with the plain Janes and black male servants stuck to their posts, both unable to move because of restrictions placed upon gender and race. While there is the occasional specter of interracial sex depicted as over the top, lurid melodrama, sort of like camp classic Mandingo, it's mercifully brief. At his best, director Duigan well illustrates the price a nineteenth-century woman paid for daring to express passion.
Red Shoe Diaries
Starring Brigitte Bako David Duchovny Billy Wirth Director Zalman King Production Company Republic Pictures Running Time 107 Min Year 1992
Red Shoe Diaries, with its glossy erotica aimed at women and couples, this sexy cable phenomenon became an even bigger success on video by putting three episodes per tape into a nicely packaged series. Each episode investigates desire on the edge and is beautifully photographed, with the complement of top-notch production values. While the romantic and softcore elements obviously indicate female viewer appeal, the Red Shoe Diaries exhibit enough comely flesh to interest male spectators as well. On display are men and women exploring pent-up desires and throwing caution to the wind. And while this series is a great example of how the chase and what is hidden is often more arousing because it leaves something to the imagination, this is also the only place where you can see some fairly well-known performers involved in such sexy scenarios. . .
Belle Epoque
Starring Director Fernando Trueba Production Company Columbia Tristar Running Time 109 Min Year 1994
Belle Epoque is the irresistible story of Fernando, a handsome, young Spanish Civil War deserter who befriends a free-thinking artist. Fernando finds himself in a romantic dilemma when the artist's four beautiful daughters return to their country home -- which woman should he romance? The answer is hilariously simple, as Fernando is seduced instead, by each of the high-spirited sisters. (Every man's dream!) Reminiscent of Like Water for Chocolate, it's a rollicking sensual romp through a period of new found sexual freedom for women.
Two Moon Junction
Starring Sherilyn Fenn Lousie Fletcher Kristy McNichol Richard Tyson Burl Ives Director Zalman King Production Company Columbia Tristar Running Time 104 Min Year 1988
I can give you two excellent reasons to rent this movie a nude platinum blonde Sherilyn Fenn; and romance novel model/ beefcake Richard Tyson. Actually, let's make that three Kristy McNichol as Tyson's white trash girlfriend/sidekick who embraces Fenn closely with lesbian nuances.
Fenn stars as April Delongpre, the eldest daughter of a prominent southern family. Whereas I had only seen Fenn as a brunette vamp before, here she is styled much like Grace Kelley cool, icy, sophisticated; a sorority girl graduating from college and engaged to be married to a "suitable" but bland match within a week.
The moment the carnival rolls into town, the movie takes a turn for the surreal and at times, sinister. I know I'm not the only one afraid of clowns.
First we see April in a steamy shower, playing peeping tom through a hole in the shower walls at the local country club and getting steamed up. Then she escorts her two young sisters (including a striking pre-teen Milla Jovovich)and encounters Perry (Tyson), with whom she shares an immediate and awkward sexual tension.
Soon enough there worlds collide, April's libido goes wild, and neither of them fits so well into their pre-determined worlds anymore. Actually, I think Perry fits pretty easily back into his world, at least as far as class and social standing are concerned. Speaking of class, Louise Fletcher is wonderful as April's grandmother, a coy and charming southern belle matriarch with considerable power.
Don't expect much in the way of pornography, but this movie does crank up the heat between the two sexy stars in various forms of undress, and offers a good deal of eye candy to fetishists.
delicious blend of humor and passion that captured the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
Don Juan DeMarco
Starring: Faye Dunaway/Rachel Ticotin/Geraldine Pailhas/Marlon Brando/Johnny Depp/Bob Dishy
Director: Jeremy Leven, Production Company: Turner Home Entertainment, Running Time: 92 Min, Year: 1995
Let's take a little quiz:
1) Which is the most believable scenario
a) Johnny Depp looks and speaks like he was raised in Mexico; b) Marlon Brando speaks with a passable American or Mexican accent; c) Faye Dunaway has been married to Marlon Brando for 32 years and loves it when he calls her a "broad."
2) What is more important to you in a romance movie?
a) hunky leading man; b) a Zorro mask; c) Marlon Brando thirsting for love.
3) Which gesture do you find the most romantic?
a) Marlon Brando spitting popcorn up in the air for you to catch in your mouth while you both lie in bed; b) Marlon Brando putting a jewelry box on top of your champagne glass and summoning 8 loud mariachi singers while smirking and looking pleased with himself; c) both of the above.
If you chose "c" to any of the above and like a romance movie to be lighthearted with a heavy-duty suspension of disbelief, this is the movie for you!
Johnny Depp does a rather sexy and alluring job of playing Don Juan DeMarco, a young handsome man so smitten with a lost love that he attempts suicide and winds up in a psychiatric hospital in the care of Dr. Jack Mickler, a.k.a. Marlon Brando. Before long, the doctor is seduced by the lust for romance and passion his young patient exudes, and new life is infused in his own fantasy life and his marriage.
And that's about it! If you're a serious Brando fan, you may be seriously disappointed, but otherwise it's actually a pretty entertaining light movie that plucks on the heart strings just a little bit.
Sirens
Starring: Tara Fitzgerald/Elle MacPherson/Portia de Rossi/Kate Fischer/Hugh Grant/Sam Neill
Director: John Duigan, Production Company: Miramax Running, Time: 94 Min, Year: 1994
Hugh Grant plays a very repressed minister, and Tara Fitzgerald is his wife Estelle in this tale of sexual awakening and temptation.
They travel to Austrailia to attempt to subdue, influence and otherwise tone down Sam Neill, a painter whose recent work utilizing nude models is pushing clergy at home over the red-faced precipice. Upon meeting the artist and his entourage, which includes Elle MacPherson as Sheila, Kate Fischer as Pru and Portia de Rossi (lately of Ally McBeal) as Giddy, the good minister and his wife are righteously shocked and scandalized.
Grant and Neill have some heated spiritual philosophical discussions in which the artist basically bashes Christianity for silencing the inherent eroticism of women, and the minister is left sputtering. Grant is very good in this film, selling his character's indignation all the way. He avoids what would have been far too easy, to play to the audience in a tongue in cheek sort of way, but instead, remains true to the character of this role.
Estelle, who is taken under Sheila's wing, is soon affected by the wildness and forthright sexuality of the models who pose for Neill. Her loosening is completely believable and natural, and by the time that we see her caressing Giddy's limbs by the side of the swimming pond, we know that what have heretofore been unimaginable for her, is now a reality.
This is a nicely entertaining light comedy, a tad slow in parts, but utterly made up for with the beautiful bodies of all the female models, and the overt lesbian tension between them and Tara Fitzgerald.
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