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| Directed by Mike Figgis; Starring Julian Sands, Saffron Burrows, Stefano Dionisi, Kelly MacDonald, Gina McKee, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, and Bernard Hill |
Mike Figgis could go in the books as one the most off-beat and unpredictable directors out there. He might make a beautiful drama like Leaving Las Vegas, or he might serve you with the ugliest of ugly films, Mr. Jones. Entering into the theatre for The Loss of Sexual Innocence, I was completely unsure of which I would be seeing, the good or the bad Figgis. Most critics had disliked the film, including Leonard Maltin who gave it his lowest rating, but Roger Ebert thoroughly liked the film. So what exactly was The Loss of Sexual Innocence? More or less, boring.
I can safely say that no other film has been more of a task to sit through than this, every scene comes leaving you hoping that the next will be the title scroll (a problem found quite often since Figgis enjoys black fades for dramatic effect). I was squirming in my seat continually, thanks to the uncontrollable repetitiveness and the unbelievable murkiness of the film. No, I’m not saying that I wanted a light, happy film, but the darkness and the cynicism of the film was actually a turn off in the film. For a film to be meant as a testament to the natural act of sex, it was rather dim in its view, almost as if it was Pat Buchanan’s The Loss of Sexual Innocence.
The film is more or less vignettes of one man’s life and the many moments in it when he seems to have lost his sexual innocence, ranging from spying a near nude woman as a small child in Kenya to walking into a bathroom filled with pornographic pictures on the floor on a road trip with his wife and child. The man, played by Sands, is a documentary filmmaker, who is set to film in Africa and remembering this stuff on the way. What real meaning does this have? It’s not really clear, nor am I terribly interested in trying to figure it out. Oh, and by the way, intermittently during this story, we are shown the birth of Adam and Eve to their subsequent dismissal from the Garden of Eden (a part of the film that I will admit to liking).
The film is well shot, that is one thing that I cannot say is wrong with the film, but it just is not enough to completely give merit to this film. I’ve seen some bad films over the years that have tried to be risqué, but none of them had the biting commentary of Happiness or Election, neither of which had any nudity to my recollection. The script does not carry the film, nor does it really seem like there is one, the film is mostly silence, and let’s face it, Mike Figgis is no Ingmar Bergman (has Bergman become the official comparison to anybody that tries something in films these days?). There were small moments of the film that I liked, but little more.
