"very surreal. I did not care for the gore, like that blond guys' face after Edward beat the crud out of him, our when Ed shoots himself. Ug. But truly, I don't know what all the hype and attention is about. It IS just a movie after all"

Last night I went and saw Romance, a French film. I figured something obscure and French would take my mind off of work; No such luck.

Roger Ebert says that Romance isn't porn. You remember when Jesse Helms said "I know porn when I see it." Well I seen it.

Romance isn't romantic or very titillating. Perhaps that's what Roger was thinking.

You remember when you were a teenager and you would think of just what act
constituted sex and what could be considered "fooling around?" Well,,,
Romance had every one of those acts right up there on the big screen. If I
had had every one of those acts done to me,,, well I would consider myself
royally f****d!

I wouldn't say that I enjoyed the film, but it made me think. Almost
everybody in the film was sexually hung up, except for the Italian porn star
who's d**k was almost the star of the film. But he only had a "small" role.
Sic!

The only way I could tell that the Italian porn star and the girl weren't
having sex on screen was that there was no way she could have taken him and
lay there like a dead fish that the scene required.

Other than that, there were d**ks in her mouth, d**ks in her hands, fingers
up her p***y, toungs up her p***y, a medical exam scene that went on forever
and a live birth on screen. And at least once there was a d**k up somebody's
p***y. I think it was a stunt p***y.

Guess what? No one was enjoying them selves.

So, was it a good film? No, I think not. But it raises an interesting question. When is film real and when is it just a movie? Movies have the ability to affect us emotionally and that is probably the most real that it can get.

The actress in Romance was doing real things in the portrayal of a role. This was not a documentary. A documentary is real, but it is also a film.

So what's real?

All my life, I've always felt that the point of movies was to completely surrender yourself to what you are watching, and in doing so, you are no longer watching, but experiencing. Where else in life can you do this? For two hours you are given the opportunity to throw the real world in the trash and become the protagonist. Most films are made well enough that you can easily do this; others aren't and you feel that you've just wasted two hours of your life.

These days, it seems like people are less willing to surrender their emotions to a movie, which makes the movie-makers' jobs harder. Special effects have to be more realistic, emotions have to stem from modern day problems, and writers have to come up with absolutely original ideas, which rarely happens.

So, back to Ian's question ... when is a movie real and when is it just a movie? Well, to me, a movie is real when it affects me in a very real way. It doesn't matter if what I'm watching is real, like the sex that Ian described in the French film. If I walk back into the real world from the movie theatre carrying the experience of the movie with me, the film was a success in my book. Whether that experience was happy, sad, frightening, vomit enducing, disturbing - it's only the films that inspire absolutely NO reaction in me that I consider bad films. The point of movies is to create a reaction. It seemed to me that Ian had a VERY real reaction. Whether the sex was faked or real, he walked out of that theatre feeling f**ked, which seemed to be the film's purpose.

OK, I'm stepping down off the soap box now. That was fun
 

Romance was directed by Catherine Breillat, a French filmmaker known for pushing the sexual hot button. Her most recent movie, Fat Girl, has been banned in Ontario because that picture has a scene with a teenage girl having sex.
 

Moving to Yak.
 

But alas, Jack Valenti decided anyone making adults only films can use the NC-17 rating whether the film is pornographic or not. Valenti said they would not make subjective, artistic decision on what is porn and what is not.

For me, there is a pretty simple rule that works nearly all of the time. In one film actors act like they are having sex. In another film the people are not acting; they're really doing it. A non-porn adults only film may have sex scenes where the action looks pretty torrid, but you don't see any physical penetration. The other kind of film zooms in on the penetration. And any film that has a "money shot" at the end of the scene is most definitely porn.

It sounds to me like "Romance" is porn. If there is explicit on camera penetration, and a lot of it throughout the movie, it qualifies as porn.

I can think only a couple examples of films where explicit on camera sex occured in a serious film. I cannot remember the name of a European film I saw where in one scene this lady goes down on her boyfriend in a movie theater for real. That was the only explicit scene in the film. If I recall correctly, PBS had some period piece TV movie (I think it was a BBC import) that showed a couple getting raunchy for real behind some bushes. Those kinds of examples are very rare exceptions to a pretty steady rule. Most any serious film with strong sexual content in it is going to leave out on camera shots of coitus and merely suggest it.
 

The switch to NC-17 (like the other ratings besides X, a copyrighted mark) was a vague attempt to placate those who want a separate adult rating without actually requiring them to make those distinctions. The idea was that since X was still available for porno makers to self-apply and NC-17 would only apply to films that have gone through the rating system presumably the porn makers wouldn't bother ("XXX" being a selling point) and NC-17 would escape the taint of porn. If NC-17 has become tainted anyway then there is every reason to think that an "A" Adult rating would be as well. The fact that people are calling "Romance" a porno film sight unseen is proof of that.
 

Y Tu Mama Tambien:

"The movie is realistic about sex, which is to say, franker and healthier than the smutty evasions forced on American movies by the R rating. We feel a shock of recognition: This is what real people do and how they do it, sexually, and the MPAA has perverted a generation of American movies into puerile masturbatory snickering.

...

Why did [director Alfonso Cuaron] return to Mexico to make it? Because he has something to say about Mexico, obviously, and also because Jack Valenti and the MPAA have made it impossible for a movie like this to be produced in America. It is a perfect illustration of the need for a workable adult rating: too mature, thoughtful and frank for the R, but not in any sense pornographic. Why do serious film people not rise up in rage and tear down the rating system that infantilizes their work?"

National Lampoon's Van Wilder:

"The movie is a barfathon that takes full advantage of the apparent MPAA guidelines in which you can do pretty much anything with bodily functions except involve them in healthy sex. The movie contains semen, bare breasts and butts, epic flatulence, bizarre forms of masturbation, public nudity, projectile vomiting and an extended scene of explosive defecation with sound effects that resemble the daily duties of the Port-a-Loo serviceman, in reverse. There are also graphic shots of enormous testicles, which are allowed under the National Geographic loophole, since they belong to Van Wilder's pet bulldog. Presumably the MPAA would not permit this if it had reason to believe there were dogs in the audience."
 

Be not afraid!

Some of our staff members saw the film and were shocked. But we suspect that they are virgins. To quote a line from a gay film, "Relax, it's just sex!" To paraphrase another line from Dogma, 'Come to here of it, sex is pretty much a joke down here too.'

I have now posted a sign in the lobby and the window that states "No one under the age of 18 admitted to Y Tu Mama Tambien."

Sometimes you just have to spell it out.

 

Filmmakers, at first, applauded it in that they would have something besides the "X" to use. But when the MPAA backtracked and stated NC-17 would be available to porn films as well (and some porn films actually used it), then the whole effort became an extremely pathetic and laughable disgrace --especially in showing how silly the MPAA has become.

The MPAA knows they wield a heavy amount of power. Everybody knows that. Their "we're just a little service for parents" thing is just plain stupid.

Everyone knows that many movie theater circuits, such as Carmike Cinemas, has a flat out ban on booking any NC-17 rated films. Most exhibitors know the flak they will get from church groups to businesses if they carry an NC-17 film. And that is because the NC-17 rating has every bit as much a stigma to it as the old X rating. NC-17 equals commercial marketing death for most major releases. Film distributors 99% of the time cannot afford to fund NC-17 projects. Most distributors force filmmakers to agree to contract items that specifically stipulate the delivery of a film with no worse than an "R" rating. It is funny in a kind of sad way just how much trouble some filmmakers have to go through to appease the MPAA in toning down films enough to get the "R".

It is very very easy to tell the difference from a porn film and a serious film containing subject matter too intense for anyone under 17. The MPAA knows full well how easy it would be to distinguish the differece. The sad fact is they simply refuse to do so. As I said earlier, the difference between porn and adults-only drama is a physical difference, not subjective.
 

Whether that spin on verbage will make any difference between a circuit like Carmike Cinemas carrying the film in their theaters or newspaper or TV stations agreeing to run any ads for it, I really don't know. But I do know the production would be largely out of luck if it had been tagged with the NC-17. And it might very well have already been slammed with it. The filmmakers likely chose to carry no rating at all for their film rather than whittle it down to how ever Jack Valenti and his group wanted it edited.
 

I have now seen Y Tu Mama Tambien. There are five sex scenes and the masturbation scene. No place in the movie to you see a turgid penis or a vagina. The sex scenes never go beyond the two scenes at the beginning of the movie. Also, and it's a plot point, none of the sex scenes go on too long.

This film in no way compares to the graphic nature of a film such as Romance. I have seen sex scenes like these in many "R" rated films.

I am slightly pissed at the boys for blowing the nature of this film out of proportion.

I have lifted the restriction on this film and will now treat it as an "R" rated film.

By the way, I thought the film was very good and thought provoking. It is also the exact type of film that a mature 16-18 year old should see. Obviously we don't have any of those mature 16-18 year olds on staff.