Kiss and tell: Change going on at the movies

Kiss and tell: Change going on at the movies

Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Whatever the merits of the storyline of Arisan (Gathering), it's
the same-sex kiss, rather chaste though it is, that has been
grabbing tons of attention from the press.

It elicits a similar "can't believe my eyes" reaction that
also came along with the kissing scene of Dian Sastrowardoyo and
Nicolas Saputra in Ada Apa Dengan Cinta? (What's Up With Cinta?)
last year.

Again, it's not that it's particularly steamy when compared
with Hollywood fare at local movie theaters or the widely
available porn (whatever takes your fancy) on city streets. But
for a generation raised on the cartoonish sexuality and innuendo
of the popular "Warkop" comedy troupe -- more or less all that
passed inspection at mainstream theaters during the repressive
Soeharto regime -- seeing two characters getting up close and
personal without a nudge-nudge, wink-wink in sight was a minor
social revolution.

Today, with movies like Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut
earning nary a raised eyebrow despite the sight of Nicole Kidman
in the altogether, it's easy to forget how standards and
practices have changed in the last few years. Several major
mainstream movies have pushed the envelope, either to a better,
more tolerant, progressive society, or sending us to hell in a
hand basket, depending on your perspective.

Here are a few of the notable ground-breakers in international
cinema:

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967).

Comes across as severely dated today -- young, upper-middle
class white woman brings back home her black fiancee, shocking
her parents -- but it meant a lot way back, when America was
still reeling from the race riots in Watts, Los Angeles, and the
desegregation battles down South in the early 1960s. Still, there
is a big "so what?" factor at play, with Sidney Poitier's
character being much too good to be true. The baffling secret of
its success must also have something to do with its glaring
sentimentality, too, with a rather infirm Spencer Tracy making it
through his last movie, helped to no end by Katherine Hepburn
(the real love of his life), who somehow won an Oscar.

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

Despite the critical beating that director John Schlesinger
has taken in recent years, this is an unforgettable movie, with
the haunting New York locales the backdrop for the tale of two
losers desperately on the make in the Big Apple. First X-rated
movie to win Best Picture Oscar -- the cowboy character beats up
on an old lech in a seedy hotel room and shoves a phone receiver
(very symbolic) down his throat; makes love to a middle-aged
matron; goes to a psychedelic drug party -- but would be more
likely to get an R rating today.

Women in Love (1969)

Director Ken Russell is over the top at the best of times --
check out his later film, The Music Lovers, a biopic of
Tchaikovsky, with the ghastly sight of the composer's spurned
wife, played by Glenda Jackson, getting fondled as she squats
over a grille at a mental home. Jackson is here again, in
Russell's adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel, but it's the
Alan Bates-Oliver Reed nude wrestling scene in front of the
fireplace that got critics and audiences riled up. A bit of full
frontal male nudity was a rarity back then, and remains so today,
save for brief flings, such as Harvey Keitel's frolic in The
Piano.

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

Marlon Brando, running to fat but not quite there yet, is the
widower who embarks on a steamy love affair with a young woman in
Paris. In the city of romance, they get down and dirty, including
finding a nontraditional use for a stick of butter. Ooh la la;
one critic called this "salacious, sexist and soporific", but,
with big Marlon laying it all out there, it certainly opened
people's eyes.

Pretty Baby (1978)

This still has a very big "ick" factor preceding it, which
kind of overshadows the fact that it was made by acclaimed French
director Louis Malle, is not a bad film and has young Susan
Sarandon to boot. But the spectacle of a preteen Brooke Shields
posing naked, even if she looks like Boticelli's Venus, was not
about to endear Malle to critics or the viewing public -- and
will strike some as even more distasteful 25 years on.

The Hunger (1982)

Too stylish for its own good, this tale of a trio of vampires
on the prowl in New York City has a graphic love scene between
Catherine Deneuve and Sarandon (who is also memorable for her
cold lemon rinds from the fridge scene in Atlantic City the
previous year). Raised eyebrows but didn't cause any riots in the
United States for the simple reasons that Sarandon was not quite
a marquee name and Deneuve is ... well, she's French.

Deathtrap (1982)

Unremarkable and stagey movie, adapted from a long-running
Broadway whodunit, has one head-turning moment: Michael Caine
plants a kiss on the lips of Christopher Reeves. It's a very
wooden smooch at that and, similar to the publicity storm for
Arisan, Caine and Reeves went to great pains to recount that they
needed to share a big bottle of whisky before they could get into
the moment ("we're heterosexual, dammit").

Crimes of Passion (1984)

No, children, Kathleen Turner has not always been Chandler's
transsexual mother on the TV show Friends. When she was still a
big-name star (Body Heat, Romancing the Stone), Turner signed up
with Ken Russell for this story of a fashion designer by day,
hooker by night who is stalked by a Bible-bashing do-gooder
(Anthony Perkins, tweaking his Norman Bates persona). In a film
that could have killed her career, Turner gives a no-holds-barred
performance. It was released in X and R-rated versions.

Basic Instinct (1992)

In a film with something to offend almost everyone, lipstick
lesbian Catherine (Stone) -- OK, she's kind of bisexual but she's
very, very stylish -- lets it all hang out during a police
interrogation. Somehow passed the censors in these parts, too,
but nobody who saw Florence Henderson's take during the MTV
Awards show will ever look at this flash in the pan quite the
same way again.