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Eros

2004, Movie, R, 108 mins

Eros: Review

EROS
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Like most anthology films, this thematically linked trio of shorts is a mixed bag. Wong Kar Wai's "The Hand," set in '60s Shanghai, is a small gem of sublimated lust; Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Dangerous Thread of Things," which unfolds in present-day Tuscany, is a disastrous examination of erotic ennui and Steven Soderbergh's "Equilibrium," set in New York in 1955, is a larky trifle about obsession. "Dangerous Thread" was shot in 2001; the other two were made almost two years later, when Soderbergh stepped in after Pedro Almodovar dropped out of the project. The three segments are connected by dreamy, animated erotic drawings by Lorenzo Mattotti, accompanied by Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso's dirgelike "Michelangelo Antonioni." In "The Hand," inexperienced tailor's apprentice Zhang (Chang Chen) falls under the spell of high-class prostitute Miss Hua (Gong Li), who assures the shy, virginal dressmaker that until he's become intimately familiar with a woman's touch, he'll never excel at making women's clothes. Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle evoke the intensity of their fragile, mutually dependent relationship, which endures even as his fortunes rise and hers fall, through Zhang's sensual, fetishistic pleasure in handling the silks, sequins and elaborate netting of Hua's exquisite gowns. In "Equilibrium," high-strung young advertising executive Nick Penrose (Robert Downey Jr.) pours out his anxieties to psychiatrist Dr. Pearl (Alan Arkin), who's more interested in looking out the window with ever-more high-powered sets of binoculars than in listening to the details of Nick's dream tryst with a nameless beauty (Ele Keats). The segment is shot almost entirely in black-and-white, punctuated by glimpses of Nick's cool blue dreamscape. Finally, three of Antonioni's short stories are combined into a single, elliptical tale, "The Dangerous Thread of Things," about an alienated couple (Christopher Buchholz, Regina Nemni), a bold, voluptuous beauty (Luisa Ranieri) and an isolated stretch of immaculate beach. So stilted and affected that it feels like a pitch-perfect parody of Antonioni's trademark mannerisms, it concludes with the two women, after executing a nude dance on the beach, locked in a cool, enigmatic stare-down as the waves lap gently at the sand. A tripartite curiosity conceived by producer Stephane Tchal Gadjieff after he worked with Antonioni (who was partly paralyzed and left speechless by a stroke in 1985) on BEYOND THE CLOUDS (1995), EROS has nothing new to say about love or sex, but Wong's bittersweet segment alone makes it worth watching. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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