Threesome (1994)

No matter what happens somebody’s gonna get screwed. Shy Eddy (Josh Charles) finds he’s rooming with brash Stuart (Stephen Baldwin) when he arrives on a new campus. They learn to tolerate and even like each other despite being diametric opposites. When Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) is accidentally billeted to the single room in their dorm suite she has to stay put because she can’t prove she’s female. She wants to have sex with Eddy but he’s inexperienced, while Stuart comes on to her too strong. The guys gang up on her when she brings home another guy. Then Eddy confesses he’s not exactly heterosexual but has never slept with either a guy or a girl and things get complicated when he realises he likes Stuart. A car trip and a naked swim bring out feelings between the three that they finally act upon  … You were just about ready to tap into something savage and emotional and you ruined it by trying to be something you’re not. Filmmaker Andrew Fleming occupies a peculiar space in cinema – an auteur in mid-range movies, mostly writing sympathetically from the point of view of young people finding their way in the world. This 90s production has a personal dimension, as it’s apparently based partly on his own college experiences. It’s beautifully shot (by Alexander Gruszynski) and filled with contemporary songs that land thematically. Alex’s attempts to seduce Eddy are initially played for comedy, as are Stuart’s attempts to sleep with Alex. They then agree to disagree and form a mysterious triangle that elicits comment on campus including from the Lobby Lizards (Martha Gehman and Alexis Arquette) but are still trying to figure out how they can sustain a friendship while dealing with the lustful feelings they are failing to manage. I love Freud, unfashionable though he may be. It’s shrewd and funny, with some great character detail and never swerves the issues even if they’re delivered in comic bits rather than serious exchanges – they’re soulful and heartfelt. I understood the moral of the story. Two’s company. Three’s pathetic

Performance (1970)

I’ll tell you this: the only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness. Right? Am I right? You with me?After killing a rival in self-defence, South London gangster Chas (James Fox) must flee both from the law and from his boss, Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon). He eventually moves into a Notting Hill guest house owned by Turner (Mick Jagger), a former rock star who lives with his two female companions Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and Lucy (Michèle Breton). Chas presents himself as juggler Johnny Dean. Chas and Turner initially clash, but Turner becomes fascinated with Chas’ life as a criminal. Through drugs and a series of psychological battles with Turner, Chas starts a relationship with Lucy and emerges a different man… Nothing is true, everything is permitted. “You do not have to be a drug addict, pederast, sadomasochist or nitwit to enjoy Performance,” wrote the New York Times reviewer, “but being one or more of those things would help.” The notorious film that made a Warner Bros. exec vomit, this directing collaboration between screenwriter Donald Cammell and cinematographer Nicolas Roeg remains a landmark of Sixties cinema and is Mick Jagger’s acting debut. It started out as a crime drama with an American crim on the lam and when it was shot in 1968 became a very different animal, an experimental and eye-opening analysis of sexual identity, exploring ideas of performance and madness culled from Antonin Artaud. Set in a frankly decadent Swinging London with graphic scenes of sex and drug use, its trippiness, use of real-life gangsters like John Bindon and riffing on the relationships between Pallenberg and Cammell (her ex), Pallenberg and Jagger (their intimate scenes were allegedly the real thing) and Pallenberg and Richards (offscreen) resulted in a screenplay drawing on Pallenberg’s own experiences which were used in Cammell’s screenplay which she co-wrote. There was a change in the plans for the soundtrack which was no longer going to be by The Rolling Stones following the tricky sex on the set:  Jack Nitzsche stepped in. Apparently Pallenberg wasn’t even aware there was a gangster plot until she saw the final cut. Breton had been part of a three way relationship with Cammell and never made another film. John Lennon’s white Rolls Royce makes a cameo appearance. It’s an astonishing and influential piece of work that was slaughtered by the critics – who are now lining up to call it a masterpiece. C’est la guerre. I need a bohemian atmosphere! I’m an artist, Mr. Turner. Like yourself  MM#2350

 

The Dreamers (2003)

Before you can change the world you must realize that you, yourself, are part of it. You can’t stand outside looking in.  In May 1968, the student riots in Paris exacerbate the isolation felt by three youths:  American exchange student Matthew (Michael Pitt) and twins Théo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green). Having bonded over their mutual love of cinema, Matthew is fascinated by the intimacy shared by Isabelle and Théo, who were born conjoined. When the twins’ bohemian parents go away for a month, they ask Matthew to stay at their apartment, and the three lose themselves in a fantasy straight out of the movies that dominate their daydreams … I was one of the insatiables. The ones you’d always find sitting closest to the screen. Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first. Adapted by the late Gilbert Adair (how I miss him) from his novel The Holy Innocents (inspired by Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles) this insinuates itself into the mind and the senses as surely as the French brother and sister at its heavily beating cinéphile’s heart. Scrupulously tracing the evolution of a romantic sensibility alongside a political education, this merges a rites of passage story with social and personal revolution in intelligently provocative fashion, fusing Adair’s narrative with director Bernardo Bertolucci’s sympathy for youthful yearning. And it’s sexy as hell, this movie about movies and movie lovers and passion and politics. Green is enigmatic and brave and beautiful, while the boys’ attraction for one another, emerging as a homosexual encounter in the original screenplay, is sacrificed by Bertolucci, whose sexual depictions are always of the hetero variety. There’s a delectable selection of movie clips and songs on the soundtrack of this startlingly beautiful dream of a film. The first time I saw a movie at the cinémathèque française I thought, “Only the French… only the French would house a cinema inside a palace”