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.