Eros
Written by Wong Kar-Wai; Steven Soderbergh; and Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai and Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni
Warner Independent Pictures
2005
Rating:


"Eros" stands as the first great cinematic disappointment of 2005. Fans of Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni would salivate over a single film from any of the three directors, so when it was announced that the auteurs were working on an anthology together, saliva ducts went dry with over-production. The experiment results in a mixed bag, ranging from rapturous (though redundant) to affable to portentous.

Misguidedly, the work opens with Kar-Wai's superior "The Hand," in which a tailor (Chang Chen) unrequitedly longs for a pseudo-geisha (Gong Li) who he only gets to touch when he takes her measurements. Kar-Wai and his masterful cinematographer Christopher Doyle know how to make even the grimiest hotel room appear romantic, and the short contains what must surely be the most poetic handjob ever captured on film. But when looked at as part of Kar-Wai's oeuvre, it's a superfluous distillation of his "In the Mood for Love."

Soderbergh displays a joy of cinema not seen since "Ocean's 11" in his short "Equilibrium," which features Robert Downey Jr. as a jittery ad-man telling his dream of yearning to a distracted psychiatrist played by Alan Arkin. Completely out of place between bookends that emphasize cinematography ("Equilibirum" does, however, open with a wonderfully photographed dream sequence), Soderbergh's short upsets the theme by ostensibly being a comedy, albeit one short on laughs.

Kar-Wai and Soderbergh both contributed to the anthology to work with one of their influences, Antonioni, the master behind such classics as "L'Avventura," "Blow-Up" and "Zabriskie Point." However, Antonioni has taken a turn toward the interminable ever since 1982's "Identification of a Woman," and his contribution, "The Dangerous Thread of Things," continues his sad, downward trajectory. Neither narrative nor imagery present themselves in a waste of celluloid that's an unintentional parody of what most Americans think foreign films are, namely a random series of inscrutable scenes and nudity. By the time two women (Regina Nemni and Luisa Ranieri) titillate and infuriate a bland Italian man (Christopher Bucholz) and cavort naked on the beach, there's surely some anti-patriarchal subtext, but it's not worth the effort to decode something that has less substance than the average installment of the We network's "Bliss" series.

Posted Thursday, April 28, 2005

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/eros