The picture is about using sexual deviation to cure tedium. Here is a group of people who are living boring lives so they are experimenting with sexual variation to give them a quick fix. This creates more impairment to these discontented people and as such the results are they become even more miserable. The end result is you get to share a "slice of life" with unhappy people having meaningless deviant sexual encounters with other unhappy people while looking for some substance in there lives. If this doesn't sound like a wonderful way to spend the evening, then I also agree.
The central character works in a morgue and some of his coworkers exchange girl friends/wives, watch home made pornography and contribute to the debasement of the women who love them. They spend the time in-between yelling at each other and feeling sorry for how miserable their lives are. The only time there is any warmth in the movie is when they are visiting their friend who is dying of AIDS. This subplot is suppose to give us some reference about life and death but it is overshadowed by the selfish behavior of the leading roles. Besides the main character who has three women who care for him and he treats them all with disdain there is a suicidal man and a lady who had died recently of a drug overdose but managed to come back to life. The main character introduced the other two into his world of S&M, general depravity but mostly humiliation. They seen to get along fine, as they are as screwed up as he is. The man keeps a book of all his sexual encounters as this is the meaning for his life and the girl is just a bored youth living on ecstasy and techno music. This movie is not about sexual obsession like Damage, Turkish Delight or even Last Tango in Paris it is about boredom, plain and not so simple. The result left me not caring about the main character, not caring what these people do and only feeling sorry for the female roles that are played with some feeling and sensitivity but not enough to save this movie from being lackluster and unmoving.
The central character works in a morgue and some of his coworkers exchange girl friends/wives, watch home made pornography and contribute to the debasement of the women who love them. They spend the time in-between yelling at each other and feeling sorry for how miserable their lives are. The only time there is any warmth in the movie is when they are visiting their friend who is dying of AIDS. This subplot is suppose to give us some reference about life and death but it is overshadowed by the selfish behavior of the leading roles. Besides the main character who has three women who care for him and he treats them all with disdain there is a suicidal man and a lady who had died recently of a drug overdose but managed to come back to life. The main character introduced the other two into his world of S&M, general depravity but mostly humiliation. They seen to get along fine, as they are as screwed up as he is. The man keeps a book of all his sexual encounters as this is the meaning for his life and the girl is just a bored youth living on ecstasy and techno music. This movie is not about sexual obsession like Damage, Turkish Delight or even Last Tango in Paris it is about boredom, plain and not so simple. The result left me not caring about the main character, not caring what these people do and only feeling sorry for the female roles that are played with some feeling and sensitivity but not enough to save this movie from being lackluster and unmoving.