Drugged Splendor
Selectively speaking, Ashley Horner‘s brilliantlove is an exceptionally hot and skillful depiction of sexual delirium. A tale about a lickin’ love affair between a couple of none-too-brights that succumbs to melodramatic poisoning by way of (horrors!) money and ambition, this British-produced Tribeca Film Festival entry, which I caught the night before last, is at the very least a stylistic stand-out. And yet I’m not sure where it stands (or writhes) in the annals of erotic cinema.
I know it feels a bit more feverish and free-fall than vaguely middlebrow sex films like Sex and Lucia and Warm Summer Rain and the like, but isn’t quite as kinky as Last Tango in Paris or graphic as The Brown Bunny or as given to obsessive perversity as In The Realm of The Senses, and yet it’s definitely a cut above. It’s certainly above the realm of Michael Winterbottom‘s 9 Songs, which I found tedious.
I said “selectively” because the story isn’t all that great. It would’ve been fine for me if brilliantlove had just been about the simple matter of Manchester (Liam Browne), a novice photographer, doing Noon (Nancy Trotter Landry), a taxidermist, over under sideways down. I certainly would have preferred a less dramatically loaded story. One about healing the broken wing of a small bird, let’s say, and the commitment that such an effort may require of two kids with very little money. Something along those lines.
That sounds like I’m describing straight hard-R porn, I realize, but Horner is very good at capturing that erotic dreamwhirl feeling that takes over when you’ve really lost yourself in someone else and you’ve long ago stopped noticing their less than radiantly attractive aspects because you’re just breathless and sliding around and shrieking and crying and finding God, or being kissed by Him/Her.
This movie really gets and recreates that, and it’s all the more remarkable due to the fact that Browne and Landry, while pleasantly or nominally attractive, aren’t model- or movie star-fetching. I for one have a major blockage about women with big feet, but Horner’s special touch somehow persuaded me to put this phobia aside.
Probably not the most pressing thing to take away from that review, but since you ended on it…
Is your phobia about women with big feet restricted to the Kate Winslet types with wide, thick, clumsy oversized feet and big ankles? That I would totally understand, or Uma Thurman… but hopefully you’re not ruling out “thin-girl feet,” when a woman is lean, somewhat tall and long-legged and has the thin ankles then slightly big feet. Because that is HOT beyond belief. See, Kirsten Dunst, Evan Rachel Wood, or Charlotte Gainsbourg for prime examples of this. It makes the legs look incredible, and complements the body overall.
Between this and the smudged makeup thing down below, it’s apparently Discuss Lex’s Fetishes Day! Up next: Brunettes with clunky glasses, Eurasian girls with pigtails, tame lesbianism, toenail painting, lollipops, Girls With Dirty Hair, pillow fighting, and Cute Moles.
Thin ankles and long (or longish) feet are fine…no problems with this at all. Not to get side-tracked or anything, but my answering this constitutes the willful or compliant hijacking of a discussion about my own article.
I share your phobia for cankles.
Where’s the talking fox?
“Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.” — David Foster Wallace (The Broom of the System)
Watched SPREAD, finally. The sex scenes were pretty gross. I liked Margarita Levieva’s feet though.
Looks like a Nathan Barley production.
Well, you wear low dresses, the sun comes shining through
Well, you wear low dresses, the sun comes shining through
I can’t believe my eyes all that mess belongs to you
This flick looks pretty douchey.
That was kind of a snap judgment, and probably not fair, but I just felt like saying it. ‘Cuz it does.
Am I the only one who liked 9 SONGS? Granted, it does systematically violate (if you’ll pardon the expression) the Ricky Roma theory of sex (if you remember from GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, when Roma is trying to pitch the client, he talks about, among other things, how when it comes to women, he doesn’t necessarily remember the sex; it’s more things like her bringing him a cup of cafe au lait the next morning), but I thought it worked as a memory piece, the songs were good, and the sex was handled in a very realistic way.
At any rate, the trailer definitely piqued my interest. It’s be nice to get a realistic view of sex in the movies for a change.
Nathan Barley! – “Trashbat is two people leaping from the twin towers and fucking on the way down!”
lipranzer – I didn’t think 9 Songs was was, as a whole, interesting enough, to have re-watchability, but I agree with this: “… it worked as a memory piece, the songs were good, and the sex was handled in a very realistic way.”
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