Despite the unassailable asset of a half-naked Mimi Rogers sprawled on a massage table, this story of soul-searching approaches worthlessness.
Self-made entrepreneur Nina (Mimi Rogers) triumphs over her compartmentalized emotional past and pours her energies into running art galleries. A worldly success, Nina ends up so relationship-challenged that she settles for the sensual intimacy of massage with a flirtatious masseur, Douglas
(Christopher Burgard). One day, charm-boy Douglas cancels and sends a brusque replacement, Fitch (Bryan Brown), who rocks cynical Nina's complacency. While Fitch waxes philosophical during her rubdown, Nina recalls her affairs with past lovers. Fitch questions Nina's value system and reminisces
about his Hopi Indian amour Alice (Elizabeth Barondes), who taught him the healing arts and helped him come to terms with his past. Before the session ends, Fitch confronts his grief about Alice, who died in a car accident. Nina experiences revelations about her shallow insularity and schedules
another appointment with Fitch, who apparently is better for more than her back.
Not since Lily Tomlin and John Travolta in 1978's MOMENT BY MOMENT has there been such a vacuous examination of spiritual longing. FULL BODY MASSAGE resembles a terrible two-character play that has been prepped for the movies with flashy intercut flashbacks. Shallow victims of the tumults of
modern relationships, Nina and Fitch pine nostalgically for every emotional grievance they've ever suffered. Time becomes a sticky taffy-pull to the audience as unfolding events are stretched out of shape by the characters' confessional chatter.
Can director Nicolas Roeg (HEART OF DARKNESS) still be considered a major talent based on the evidence of his impersonal facility here? The psychological posturing of the leading actors rubs viewers the wrong way; it seems the jaded rich who can afford the quick fixes of the 90s don't deserve
them. (Extensive nudity, profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment
