Art is another matter. While you may not have a date this year, renting a video is cheaper and allows you to get stupid about tragic amour, while laughing at all those sanctimonious Hallmark zombies who think they're happy. Ha. You don't need anybody.
Herewith is a quartet of films about love affairs that end because one of the partners is castrated, killed, sick, or Barbra Streisand. Each one of this eclectic mix is a stellar effort in its own way, and I've thoughtfully divided the selection in halves that address both shameful parts of your psyche -- two films about gushing, romantic love, and two films about gushing, ravenous humping. (But, as in real life, we'll put the humping first.) Close the blinds and roll around with abandon.
In the Realm of the Senses
(dir. Nagisa Oshima, 1976)Two beautiful people go at it, and for it, for about two hours until one of 'em can't handle it any longer and takes, ahem, things into her own hands. Last Tango in Paris is for wussies, compared to Oshima's visual essay of sexual obsession. This is the movie that, in film school, had me in barely contained hysterics, fearing I was going to be asked to leave the screening; there was just something so hilarious about watching a bunch of aesthetes calmly sitting and watching a man eating his dinner out of a woman's vagina. Nothing can properly prepare you for the level of hypnotic rutting on display here, but be aware that the film was inspired by a true incident in Japan, in which a woman was found stumbling around the street carrying a severed penis (she later became a symbol of female liberation). Whether or not she treated her husband to the favors detailed here is beside the point. Though it eventually runs out of momentum, Realm is a dazzlingly perverse film that transcends pornography.
The Pillow Book
(dir. Peter Greenaway, 1996)Even if you have to deal with his sometimes elaborate pretense in order to appreciate it, Peter Greenaway is the only director of note who successfully visualizes the ethereal transport of literature. In this luscious piece of heady erotica, he makes good on the human body's promise as a perfect medium for storytelling. Then he destroys you. Gorgeous Vivian Wu wants revenge on the man who wronged her calligrapher father, and gets sidetracked by dood- ling on an am- bisexual Ewan McGregor. Can you blame her? Things don't work out too well for the pair; lucky for us, there's a lot of nudity and sensuous body painting before the eventually endless tragedy (the last half hour or so is beautifully articulated, but screams in anguish for an editor). Greenaway's mesmerizing visuals don't work as well on a small screen, which really doesn't matter, because he delivers the biggest Valentine and the four most exciting words in modern cinema: full frontal Ewan McGregor.
Untamed Heart
(dir. Tony Bill, 1993)Marisa Tomei is a loser in love who falls for a gentle, brooding oddball played by Christian Slater, who has a baboon heart, but a healthy capacity for devotion. Yes, it's corny, but when did that become such a crime in a film that just wants to make you cry? Director Bill has long been turning out underappreciated little gems (he also made My Bodyguard and Five Corners), and this film, with a fine script by Tom Sierchio, is arguably the most appealing of them. Not many cinematic romances approach the transforming qualities of love with such understatement, or so quietly assert that completely loving another human being, however briefly, is an accomplishment in itself. Untamed Heart plays like a small fable, and transcends its trappings with hushed tenderness. Infamous Oscar-winner Tomei exudes a natural, delicate strength, and God knows this is Slater's finest hour (it's one of the few times he's not trading on his Nicholson impersonation). Don't question the film's sentiment -- just follow its whims and prepare for a sniffle.
The Way We Were
(dir. Sydney Pollack, 1973)So sue me. If you can't go with this, you don't deserve it. Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford make each other miserable with love, in the movie that probably represents the last great gasp of old-fashioned Hollywood romance. People who try to make this kind of slush today always forget that you have to mean it. Babs is a radical, leftist Jew who, like anyone else with a brain, loses her common sense when confronted with the sight of careless, young WASP Redford in a creamy white sweater. They get caught up in McCarthy-era Hollywood machinations, and commie Barbra rails at writer Robert for being a sellout to the system. But she never stops wanting him. Nobody dares to make a big, drippy, commercial movie anymore in which the two stars don't get to run off into the sunset. The Way We Were, however artificial, famously ends the way it would in reality: with two heartbroken people, and the knowledge that love cannot conquer all.
