"Real" orgasms

I.

I sometimes wonder the extent to which the much-celebrated Katz's Deli "I'll have what she's having" scene in Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner's 1989 When Harry Met Sally affected the sex lives of the Joe and Josephine Popcorns, if you'll excuse the phrase, who have seen it over the years. The scene is a classic for a reason; Meg Ryan's Sally hoists Billy Crystal's Harry by the petard of his own sexist presumption but good. But one reason the movie is as cozy a concoction as it is has to do with the fact that after the punchline, it never returns to the topic of female orgasm; the discomfort Harry feels after initially sleeping with Sally and then fleeing from her prior to the inevitable fateful facing of facts and return to romance has nothing to do with this particular facet of sexual or emotional exchange. Someone might expect, in the depiction of their growing intimacy, a query from the acceptably neurotic Harry along the lines of "how do I know you're not faking it with me?" But the viewer is left to presume that they've worked that all out. Actually, given the way the movie progresses to its conclusion, my feeling is that the filmmakers were/are hoping that you've pretty much forgotten about the whole thing. This is When Harry Met Sally, not The Mother And The Whore. The viewer is meant to feel pleasant feelings, not particularly complicated or uncomfortable or unpleasant ones. 

This idea as it pertains to comedy, and to romantic comedy, is changing—see Girls on the one hand, and the Hangover movies on the other (what they share in common is the view that pretty much all sexual relations are somehow predicated on hostility)—and it's also changing as it pertains to drama, and romantic drama. The ideas change, but the issues of representation remain just as fraught. Next to race, the depiction of sexuality on screen is about the most fraught thing ever, and right now it is as fraught as  it ever has been. And critics, depending on their ideological perspective, direct and/or unique experience, or just plain contrarian pissiness (to name just three of what could be dozens of factors) will unpack a given work dealing with this representation in sometimes wildly divergent ways. 

In 1969, expressing what he characterized as his sole major disappointment in director Tony Richardson's adaptation of his novel Laughter In The Dark (whose female lead's name, Anna Karina,  apparently amused him no end), Vladimir Nabokov said: "Theatrical acting, in the course of the last centuries, has led to incredible refinements of stylized pantomime in the representation of, say, a person eating, or getting deliciously drunk, or looking for his spectacles, or making a proposal of marriage. Not so in regard to the imitation of the sexual act which on the stage has absolutely no tradition behind it. The Swedes and we have to start from scratch and what I have witnessed up to now on screen—the blotchy male shoulder, the false howls of bliss, the four or five mingled feet—all of it is primitive, commonplace, conventional and therefore disgusting. The lack of art and style in these paltry copulations is particularly brought into evidence by their clashing with the marvelously high level of acting in virtually all other imitations of natural gestures on our stage and screen. This is an attractive topic to ponder further, and directors should take notice of it." This was in an interview with Philip Oakes of the Sunday Times of London that ran on June 22 1969 and was of course reprinted in Strong Opinions, a compendium of interviews and essays and occasionals by Nabokov. 

Since 1969, significant strides, one could say, have been made in the on-screen depiction of the sex act, although it would be useless to speculate as to whether they might have found favor with the notoriously particular Nabokov. Nudity is no longer so taboo, although the proscriptions regarding who may see nudity in films remain pretty strong. The simulation of sex acts has become more realistic via the use of prosthetics (see Catherine Breillat's Sex Is Comedy, a droll behind-the-scenes look at the absurdity and awkwardness of a film set not unlike one of Breillat's own) and digital manipulation (by which means, say, an actress' body stocking can be handily erased). There is also a mild trend toward unsimulated sex. The sex in the early films of Joe Swanberg, while staged, is often not simulated. Martin Scorsese once said he didn't like nude scenes because they stopped a film's narrative dead; cinematic open-heart surgeon John Cassavetes also largely abjured them, perhaps for different reasons. In films such as those of Swanberg's, they are inextricable from the narrative. Although I continue to insist that the discomfort the scenes in Swanberg's films might cause in a viewer have little to do with Swanberg's intentions or motivations. (I continue to believe that Swanberg began his moviemaking efforts as a Joe Francis with a film-appreciation-class schtick under his belt, and that his current films are an attempt to live that unsavory fact down.) In matters sexual as depicted on screen, there's a continuing fascination with/desire for the real. Only it's not desired in the context of pornography, at least that's the party line. Pornography, no matter what it show us, isn't art. Pornography doesn't win Palmes d'Or, nor does it get its participants commended for their bravery. Pornography doesn't count. But why should it not? 

II.

Here is a passage from "Big Red Son," David Foster Wallace's essay chronicling the Adult Video News Awards of 1998. The character of "Harold Hecuba" is in fact Evan Wright, who was a writer and editor at Hustler magazine at the time. Not to potentially alienate any of my younger readership by getting too "Losing My Edge" on them, I can confirm that Wallace, writing under a dual pseudonym, here sets down the story pretty much as Wright told it (maybe overselling the super-decent-guy aspects of the detective character just a teensy bit): 

"Mr. Harold Hecuba, whose magazine job entails reviewing dozens of adult releases every month, has an interesting vignette about a Los Angeles Police Dept. detective he met once when H.H.'s car got broken into and a whole box of Elegant Angel Inc. videotapes was stolen (a box with H.H.'s name and work address right on it) and subsequently recovered by the LAPD. A detective brought the box back to Hecuba personally, a gesture that H.H. remembered thinking was unusually thoughtful and conscientious until it emerged that the detective had really just used the box's return as an excuse to meet Hecuba, whose critical work he appeared to know, and to discuss the ins and outs of the adult-video industry. It turned out that this detective—60, happily married, a grandpa, shy, polite, clearly a decent guy—was a hard-core fan. He and Hecuba ended up over coffee, and when H.H. finally cleared his throat and asked the cop why such an obviously decent fellow squarely on the side of law and civic virtue was a porn fan, the detective confessed that what drew him to the films was 'the faces,' i.e. the actresses' faces, i.e. those rare moments in orgasm or accidental tenderness when the starlets dropped their stylized 'fuck-me-I'm-a-nasty-girl' sneer and became, suddenly, real people. 'Sometimes—and you never know when, is the thing—sometimes all of a sudden they'll kind of reveal themselves' was the detective's way of putting it. 'Their what-do-you-call...humanness.' It turned out that the LAPD detective found adult films moving, in fact far more so than most mainstream Hollywood movies, in which latter films actors—sometimes very gifted actors—go about feigning genuine humanity, i.e.: 'In real movies, it's all on purpose. I suppose what I like in porno is the accident of it.'"

Below, although it is not in any way explicit, is an arguably "not safe for work" image of then-porn-performer Stephanie Swift in an early appearance, in a segment from a pornographic anthology feature, one of whose prime directives involves demonstrating the intensity of Ms. Swift's actual orgasms. 

The feature in question was/is Up And Cummers 29, produced in 1996 and subsequently anthologized in countless collections either highlighting star Swift or the newbie-gonzo genre or the real-female orgasms category or what have you. Images of Swift experiencing ostensibly real orgasms are widely available all over the internet. In 1998, at the Adult Video News Awards, she won a Best Female Performer statuette. 

So yes, Swift DID recieve an award, arguably, for both her willingness and her effectuality in conveying the real to her circumscribed audience, but let's not kid ourselves, the AVN Awards pretty much exist only to be ridiculed, or pondered over in think pieces such as the one that "Big Red Son" both was and sort of tried to resist being, think pieces that conclude either that pornography is kind of bad and kind of sad, or pieces that try to debunk that thinking and tell us to loosen up and smoke a joint and relax and enjoy yourself for once but which similarly insist, mostly indirectly, that pornography is not and cannot be art and cannot tell individual viewers or the culture anything epistemologically significant. There is also the inherent supposition that if porn ever shows viewers reality, or the real, its doing so is entirely incidental and besides its ostensible point, which is catering/pandering to male sexual fantasies. This generalization, while not entirely unreasonable, fails to take into account certain varieties of porn. For instance, in the latter part of her career as a pornographic performer, before it was ended after a bout with cancer and a subsequent experience of born-again Christianity, Swift appeared in several titles for a production concern called Sweetheart/Sweet Sinner, founded by Nica Noelle, who directs a number of its titles. The dual label (Sweetheart deals exclusively in lesbian content; Sweet Sinner caters to straight couples) touts its product as showcasing "real lovemaking, real orgasms." 

After relating Hecuba/Wright's anecdote, Wallace warms to the theme: porn films "are supposed to be 'naked' and explicit but in truth are some of the most aloof, unrevealing footage for sale anywhere. Much of the cold, dead, mechanical quality of adult films is attributable, really, to the performer's faces. These are faces that usually appear bored or blank or workmanlike but are in fact simply hidden, the self locked away someplace far behind the eyes." Describing the (in his experience of viewing) extremely rare occasions when "the hidden self appears," Wallace avers: "It's sort of the opposite of acting. You can see the porn performer's whole face change as self-consciousness (in most females) or crazed blankness (in most males) yields to some genuinely felt erotic joy in what's going on; the sighs and moans change from automatic to expressive. It happens only once in a while, but the detective is right: The effect on the viewer is electric." And what is the reward for the performer who reveals this to the viewer? There is none, really, and it's rather likely that the performer didn't get into the business with the express idea of revealing the real to his or her audience anyway. 

III

The Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival went to a film called, in French, La Vie d'Adèle, and in English, Blue Is The Warmest Color. It is based on a French graphic novel by Julie Maroh and was directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. In awarding the festival's highest honor to the film, the Cannes jury head Steven Spielberg insisted that its lead actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopouos take the stage with its director. Spielberg later said at a press conference that "had the casting been even three percent wrong, [the movie] wouldn't have worked for us as it did."

The movie, which I have not seen, is a coming-of-age romantic drama about a love affair between two young women. The reaction from Cannes reflected on its generous three-hour running time, and on its unusually explicit love scenes. In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw called it "a blazingly emotional and explosively sexy film." Warming to his theme, Bradshaw continued that Blue "reminds you how timidly unsexy most films are, although as with all explicit movies, there will be one or two airy sophisticates who will affect to be unmoved by it, and claim that the sex is 'boring.' It isn't." As Nigel Tufnel before Bradshaw observed, there is nothing wrong with being sexy. If you can't swing with that, Bradshaw reckons, you're affected, and probably epicene. For whatever reason, Bradshaw has made his agenda not just the movie and his direct experience of it, but how uptight anyone who claims to be unmoved by the movie has to be. I get it—you should too—and that fellow over there?—let's not have him at our party. This is all fine as far as it goes, in a settling-scores-with-a-straw-man kind of way. When The New York Times' Manohla Dargis registered an exception with respect to the sex scenes, the back and forth became somewhat more revealingly specific. 

"As as the camera hovers over  [Exarchopouos'] open mouth and splayed body, even while she sleeps with her derrière prettily framed, the movie feels far more about Mr. Kechiche’s desires than anything else," Dargis wrote. "Kechiche registers as oblivious to real women." Once the film was awarded the Palme d'Or, Jeffrey Wells gloated that the Dargis complaint (his term: "too male horn-toady") fell on deaf ears and then quoted a "filmmaker friend" who speculated that the jury gave the film an award specifically as a rebuke to Dargis. The only thing this mini-masterpiece of very male spite omitted was the instruction that Dargis ingest a bag of penises. 

Certain more erudite ripostes and apologias followed. One person implied that the amount of (apparently unsimulated) snot blown out of the lead actresses' noses during the crying scenes more than made up for whatever prurient interest the love scenes might have entertained for the males in the audience; another mournfully speculated that academic feminist jargon was gonna get in the way of our feelings, man. (Just imagine, in this day and age, when the phrase "male gaze" has gained sufficient mainstream currently that it can be regularly abused by writers for Badass Digest.) Again, I haven't seen the film, so I have no idea of what I'm talking about, only I did get a very direct sense, in reading the responses to Dargis' objections, of boys who have finally been pushed to admit that they've gotten a little fed up with being proper, with doing the right thing. What I can't stop myself from hearing underneath all of the argumentation is: "I've been a good boy. I've played nice. Why can't you let me have this?" 

IV.

My friend Susan Walsh, a writer, worked on and off as a stripper and sex show performer until she disappeared, in a still-unsolved case, in July of 1996. One of the writing projects she was most proud to have been involved in was Red Light: Inside The Sex Industry, a book of short essays and photojournalism by the photographer Sylvia Plachy and the reporter James Ridgeway. The book was issued by Powerhouse Books just a month before Susan disappeared.

In addition to assisting Jim and Sylvia with research and interviews, Susan allowed herself to be one of the book's subjects. She appears in several photographs by Sylvia, one a very haunting posed portrait, the others depicting her in several faceoffs with patrons of a New Jersey strip club. She allowed Jim and Sylvia to reproduce a passage from her journal, the last paragraph of which reads: "'Just let me get my finger wet and I'll give you this twenty,' one customer will say, holding the bill between two fingers as if it's his precious dick, the middle finger erect and pointing between my legs. Then he'll try to shove it in before I can move back as his friends laugh. Their buddy's getting married and deserves a little from the slut on stage. Wagging their tongues in proud displays of cunnilingus, grasping my hand after they tip me so I can't go back on stage, pulling me by the wait and planting me on a barstool as I try to run to the dressing room, they struggle to be warriors in the dirtiest battle known to humanity."

Comments

[Petey]

"The simulation of sex acts has become more realistic via the use of prosthetics (see Catherine Breillat's Sex Is Comedy ... There is also a mild trend toward unsimulated sex."

See Catherine Breillat AGAIN - aka Romance back in 1999.

And when you toss Anatomy of Hell into the mix, I aver that Breillat is more central to your entire topic than is represented in this current draft.

[bill]

I haven't seen this either, obviously. My one point, which might be less relevant than I think it is, is that for quite a while, several male filmmakers have been applauded, in a sense, for "putting their dick[s]" on screen (as I believe one critic of BLUE said about it and Kechiche). I'm talking about Russ Meyer and Polanski and fetishists like Bunuel and Hitchcock and bunches more. So why is THIS movie the one, or one of the ones, where doing that is not okay? According to some.

When I see it, maybe I'll know, or not. Etc.

[md'a]

Not sure if it's my comment on the snot you're referring to, but if so, that was in response to Sasha Stone's remark that a couple of male critics she saw after the screening were visibly "hot and flushed." Which I still find unlikely, as the handful of sex scenes all occur at least 90 minutes before the movie ends. It's not that the tears and snot somehow cancel out any previous prurient interest, just that they're what you walk out of the theater having most recently experienced. I doubt that actually jerking off to hardcore porn would be discernible to someone seeing you 90 minutes later, especially if you'd been watching Scenes From a Marriage in between.

As for the ignoble motives you ascribe to those defending the film, well, y'know, that's just, like, your *opinion*, man. All I can tell you is that, having seen the film, I honestly have no idea what Manohla is talking about when she asserts that Kechiche is oblivious to real women. I'd respond similarly to someone making that claim of, say, Le Beau Mariage. It's entirely possible that (as Julie Maroh has complained) the sex scenes themselves are rather fanciful and hetero-normative; I'm not in a position to argue otherwise (alas). But all the predictable fuss notwithstanding, those scenes are a small part of a rather long movie—one that I'd like almost as much were its sex scenes excised, honestly. There's plenty else to admire.

[Andrew Bemis]

I made a film a few years ago that featured explicit nudity and simulated sex from my two female leads (when I heard the Cannes news, my first thought was "Should have sent my movie to Spielberg after all"). In editing those scenes, I put a great deal of thought into how much to show and what including or excluding each shot and angle would say about my intentions. Any filmmaker who approaches this kind of material should have a strong sense of personal responsibility to his actors and audience, as Kechiche probably does. That said, if anyone misread my intentions as sexist or prurient, or suggested that I'd misunderstood the real thoughts and experiences of women, I'd really have no choice but to shrug, admit that it's a fair thing to suggest, and maybe privately get in touch with that critic and strike up a conversation. And I'd feel very embarrassed if anyone defended me the way they've defended Kechiche's film.

[Benjamin]

To follow up on a brief reference in md'a's comment: The Guardian today had a nicely paired couple of articles that included a summary of a blog post by the author of BITWC's source graphic novel and a response. Maroh, the author, echoes Dargis to a degree with her difficulties with the sex. Four days ago she wrote a very brief entry thanking the many people who had written to her with congratulations, and promising eventual comment. And the eventual comment was, well, anyone who thought that the portrayed sex was sexy wasn't a lesbian, and the resultant scenes were effectively a straight person's porn. Bradshaw, the defender of the film Kenny cites above, is given a chance to reply to this criticism, but to my mind doesn't marshall much of a defense: he found it "sexy, passionate and moving, in that narrative order."

My own definition of "porn" has always been primarily informed by dim memories of research into Miller v. California in high school. If Maroh states that the sex scenes are in keeping with Kechiche's overall filmic style — even if it's not her own — then I'm not sure the "no artistic merit" definition can be leveled against it. But perhaps a desire to find elevating merits can blind critics to their own particular peccadilloes?

As is often the case with SCR, I'm sure this debate will flower repeatedly in the public sphere with the eventual staggered international releases.

[Jeff McMahon]

Sorry to learn about your friend, Glenn.

[md'a]

@Benjamin: The difference is that Maroh takes issue only with the sex scenes. She seems very pleased with the film as a whole, even as she notes that it reflects Kechiche's sensibility much more than her own (which, to her credit, she notes is as it should be). Manohla, on the other hand, seems (from her admittedly brief notes in what's just a journal entry, not a proper review) to dismiss the entire film primarily on the basis of those sex scenes, since the prurience factor is all she addresses. And Glenn, while admitting that he's speaking from a position of ignorance (not yet having seen the film), seems oddly eager to assume that she's right and that all the critics who loved the film (several of whom are gay males, by the way) are applauding with their dicks. There may be valid reasons to dislike the two hours and 40 minutes (minimum) of non-sexual material in this picture, but if so, let's hear 'em. Unsupported assertions that Kechiche doesn't understand women, and corresponding assumptions that those who disagree are "boys" essentially seeking validation for the magazines stuffed under their mattresses, do not constitute criticism.

[Steve]

This piece is a lot more thoughtful than Glenn Greenwald's first attack on ZERO DARK THIRTY, but at base, I'm getting a similar vibe - Glenn hasn't seen BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR, but he's suspicious of it based on the responses of some of the men who have defended it. So Manohla Dargis dislikes it. Other women, such as Stephanie Zacharek, have praised it. What's a feminist ally to do?

[md'a]

@Glenn We're hashing some of this out on Twitter right now, but I want to say here that the "not criticism" bit was more directed at Manohla than at you. And I like Manohla a lot, we're very friendly. But I do think calling a filmmaker "oblivious to real women" is much too serious a charge to be made with no backup whatsoever, and I'd say that to her face. That people who haven't seen the film are accepting it at face value bothers me.

[Chris L.]

Since I don't have a Twitter account, this might be a decent opportunity to thank Mike D'Angelo for his sharp and amusing reports from Cannes, not only this year but the past several. That's what originally led me to his website, with its labyrinth of lists and capsule reviews, and his writing for other outlets. I've thoroughly enjoyed all of the above.

Of Kechiche's work, I've only seen Secret of the Grain, but it sounds like he's stirred up similar objections before, at least for Ms. Dargis. I imagine she'll expand on these ideas in useful ways when the film opens - although the offending scenes may be tamed by that time. (I'd also like to see someone contrast Kechiche's methods with another prizewinner, "Stranger by the Lake," reportedly just as explicit with its male characters.)

[Glenn__Kenny]

For some reason my first comment hours ago did not post, or else we could have saved a lot of time and tetchy argument. Mike and I have hugged it out in the Twitterverse, but I should address what turned out to be something of a miscalculation here as well. I very deliberately only directly cited Bradshaw and Wells, and wanted to base the remainder of my observations concerning the Dargis assertion and its pushback on an impression drawn from a kind of aggregate. My point being, regardless of who ends up in "the right," when a female critic makes a complaint relative to the assertion of male privilege, the response does itself no favors if it gives the impression of being itself a form of an assertion of male privilege. My other point is that whether or not I or other males like it, responding "I'm not that guy" does not in and of itself solve the problem. History, I think, obliges us to work harder. Mike's point with respect to Manohla's assertion is that she hasn't proved it. And of course very few people, myself included (I can't stress that enough) haven't even seen the film in question. But even aggregates conceived in good faith are contrivances, and fallible, and while I didn't want to hit Mike with the "J'accuse" hammer it looks as if I did anyway. Which, aside from creating regrettable ruffled feathers, also distracts from what I wanted the larger point of the piece to be.

I allow that I might have been better off keeping my powder dry (until fall, Jesus!) but the topic is one I give a lot of thought to (I hope that's evident) and I thought that if I took enough care I might be forgiven for jumping the gun. And except for the toes I directly stepped on, I didn't want to step on any toes, but I suppose that's impossible in this manifestation of our information age.

[md'a]

Thanks much, Chris.

Stranger By The Lake is even more explicit than Blue Is The Warmest Color (though it reportedly uses body doubles for the most graphic shots, which Kechiche clearly does not). And there is much, much more sexual content—the entire film is set in a cruising spot, and most of the characters (all men) are nude from start to finish. Nobody seems troubled by this, perhaps because men aren't sexually objectified elsewhere to the ludicrous extent that women are. Plus, Guiraudie is a gay man himself, so you can't credibly accuse him of exploiting other people's sexual preferences for his own jollies.

[NF]

It would help if any of Dargis' huffiest critics gave any indication whatever of familiarity with her work. Truthfully, I haven't read every retort (not enough hours in the day, clearly), but Richard Porton's in The Daily Beast is far from encouraging. Ascribing 'ideological blinders' to a critic who gave a glowing review to Shortbus (speaking of real orgasms) strikes me as a bit of a stretch. Not to mention it blows to pieces the notion that Dargis believes the sex scenes 'are unacceptable because they’re the handiwork of a male director.'

This episode reminds me of another critical juxtaposition courtesy of Dargis--concerning Gaspar Noe's Irreversible. As something of a fan, Roger Ebert called it 'unflinchingly honest about the crime of rape' and ended his review by explicitly calling it 'not pornography. In contrast, Dargis came down on its most infamous scene thusly: 'This isn't a realistic rape in all its venal banality; it's an aestheticized, sexualized pantomime of a rape.'

Obviously, very few of us having seen the film in question, a lot of this debate so far boils down to 'Who you gonna trust?' Considering how blithely some are dismissing 'feminist fury' isn't encouraging.

Also not helping its reputation as 'not pornography' is the report that the scene features 'impressive scissoring.' The prevalence of scissoring is a male pornographic myth if ever there was one. Maybe this is what Dargis meant by 'oblivious.'

[Oliver_C]

You learn something new every day: in this case the meaning of "scissoring" in a non-censorial context... O.o

[Keith Uhlich]

Having seen the film in question, I can report that the sex is not just scissoring (news flash: people tend to rub their groin parts together when they're fucking), and there was never a moment where I felt Kechiche was shallowly getting off on anything he was showing. I was more happy to see sex portrayed in all its ecstatic messiness, i.e. one position does not naturally lead to another, and we often look ridiculous doing it, even as the pleasure is beyond compare. The sex scenes inform the character of Adele, and there's much more to her besides that.

My own criticism of the film, a personal preference, really, is that it's all gritty verisimilitude, absent any poetic flourishes. (It suggested to me a more dour "Goodbye First Love.") So I more admired the movie from a distance than embraced it.

All this said, I'm sure Manohla has good reasons for seeing what she sees. Differences of opinion and all, and I'm interested to see if she'll expound on it at a future date.

[Keith Uhlich]

"Expand on it" would be better. My kingdom for a copy editor.

[Brian Dauth]

@Glenn: It is probably less ideology and more what you call "direct and/or unique experience" that comes into play here. From the back-and-forth that I have read, there is a frequent lack of transparency about the sexual orientation/positionality of those involved. For example, are either Dargis or Kechiche queer? That a particular scene in a movie can be erotically charged/arousing is nothing new -- heck, I was amazed to find myself aroused by Antonioni's IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN when I first saw it at the NYFF. I was equally amazed by being aroused by a lesbian sexual encounter I witnessed when I was in a poly play space (back before the morality police shut such places down). Those who are defending Kechiche need to be more transparent about the place their admiration is emanating from. Is it that they find the female body engaged in a same-sex encounter particularly erotic?

Dargis, however, does herself no favors by using the term "real women." What does she mean by that? Are my MTF friends and colleagues real women? The term "real women" has a long and ugly history of transphobic uses by the cis-gendered community. Dargis, like her detractors, muddies the waters by not being forthcoming about her positionality.

Dargis seems to have been engaged more by the camera and its placement in the sex scene than by what was enacted in front of it -- the scene may not be erotic for her -- a thought that crosses my mind when she writes that Kechiche "seems so unaware or maybe just uninterested in the tough questions about the representation of the female body that feminists have engaged for decades." What she does not say is that the scene is a (rare) representation of female bodies engaged in same-sex activities, writing as if the bodies could be/should be disengaged from the desires they are enacting.

Are Kechiche female nudes writhing merely for the camera, or are they also writhing for each other? The answer will depend on the positionality of the spectator (we cannot read Kechiche's mind on the subject -- just express our own response to the form and content of the scene as we a) experience it and b) understand its placement in the continuum of such depictions). Has Dargis' "direct and/or unique experience" positioned her to detect both potentialities I outline above? All heterosexual sex scenes I have witnessed look to me like writhings for the camera (the Antonioni excepted). But then again, I am a hard Kinsey 6 queerboi, so my appreciation is restricted.

[I.B.]

The beginning of 'Performance' ('Performance', not 'Don't look now') is the greatest sex scene ever. BOLD STATEMENT.