Last Tango in Paris vs. 9 1/2 Weeks vs. Fatal Attraction

Three films, two of which are supposed to be highly erotic, and the third a sensational thriller. Verdict? No, no, and NO.


Last Tango in Paris. The plot from this was loosely ripped off to make “9 ½ weeks”, and like that film this is more disturbing, pretentious, and fucked up than erotic. Marlon Brando plays an American living in Paris whose wife has just been brutally murdered. He meets the chick (Maria Schneider) and they engage in an anonymous love affair in a rented apartment into which neither of them moves into, except for the barest of furniture and a mattress on the floor. Each time they meet up there, they have sex and engage in pointless chatter about random topics. Eventually the affair turns sour when Brando starts acting extremely weird and abusive, for no apparent reason, a similar ending as with “9 ½ Weeks”. I will say, though, that Maria Schneider is very cute – far sexier than Kim Basinger - and Marlon Brando is handsome in a less annoying and more endearing way than Mickey Rourke. But he still turned out to be a jerk in this film. Plus, it’s PARIS.


9½ Weeks. Supposedly the hottest, sexiest, steamiest movie around. I can see why people seem to think so, but it didn’t do much for me. Kim Basinger plays an art gallery owner, Mickey Rourke plays a stockbroker. Gee, 1986...can we do anything original here? Apparently the deal is they have this steamy relationship for... 9½ weeks. She’s divorced, his marital status is unknown. He’s kind of creepy but also mysterious in a sexy way. They have lots of passionate sex in various ways, including food in the kitchen, out in the rain in a dark alley (after fighting off some thugs – danger! adrenaline! aphrodisiac!), the ice cube down the hot body shit, etc. In this sense the movie is far more adventurous and ambitious than “Last Tango”, where all the sex takes place in one semi-abandoned apartment. Of course the guy can cook (all romantic men in these movies can cook, and it’s always sexy food, not frozen pizza or tater tots) but eventually he gets too kinky and drives the relationship into bizarre places which no longer feel sexy or arousing but simply annoying and perverted. I was never that attracted to Kim Basinger, and surely if there was any film calculated to change my mind about her, this is the one. She is pretty, though, without being sexy – at least not to me.


Fatal Attraction. Remarkably, I had NEVER seen this film before. To round out my collection, so to speak, I rented this one from Netflix. Here’s a not-so-brief synopsis.
Michael Douglas plays Dan Gallagher, a successful lawyer in New York City with a beautiful wife (Anne Archer) and a daughter (Ellen) who looks like a son. He meets Alex Forest (Glenn Close) (similarly, a woman who looks like a man – I can’t imagine ANY amount of alcohol, or any drug, which would make me get in bed with her) at a cocktail party and hooks up with her soon thereafter, when his wife and daughter are off in the countryside (Long Island? Connecticut? Who knows). Since Alex knows that Dan is married – happily so, though not for long – Dan assumes that Alex can figure out that their passionate weekend was all it could be, and will leave him alone after that.

WRONG. Alex grows possessive and obsessive, announces she’s pregnant with Dan’s child, threatens to tell Dan’s wife, and begins calling him at work, then showing up at work, then calling him at home and showing up at home. She cooks Ellen’s rabbit, destroys Dan’s car, and even takes Ellen off to an amusement park, driving the wife crazy. The woman is the quintessential “psycho bitch”.

Realizing he has to defuse the situation somehow, Dan tells his wife about the affair. Needless to say, she ain’t happy. They split apart for some time, to give the wound time to heal. Meanwhile, Alex keeps getting more and more bizarre and dangerous.

Finally she attacks them in their own home. After she appears to be drowned, she suddenly revives and wife shoots her dead with Dan’s revolver. People seem to make a big deal about this, but her “death” lasted only a minute or so, she never left the bathtub, and wife quickly finishes her off. It’s not nearly as disturbing as the Terminator’s comeback from several different “deaths”: (1) blasted several times at point blank range by Reese with a shotgun; (2) slammed into the concrete barrier head-on at 90 mph in a stolen police car; (3) run over by the 18 wheeler truck; (4) incinerated in the same truck, reduced to the “alloy combat frame”, a walking metallic skeleton; (5) blasted in half by a stick of dynamite stuck in his midsection. He’s FINALLY destroyed in the press machine by Sarah Conner. Alex’s ONE revival hardly measures against Arnold’s standard.

The DVD includes an alternate ending in which Alex kills herself by slitting her own throat (Madame Butterfly style – the female version of seppuku). The police arrest Dan on suspicion of her murder, but the wife discovers Alex’s tape in which she threatens to kill herself if Dan doesn’t go back to her; wife brings the tape to the police, and we can assume that Dan is eventually absolved of Alex’s suicide. Actually it’s not such a bad ending; it just lacks the energy and suspense that the original ending had.

A few notes: (1) Who on Earth considers Glenn Close – here done up as seductive as anyone short of Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic could achieve – attractive? She looks like a MAN in drag. Anne Archer isn’t the hottest woman on the planet, but she is clearly a woman. (2) Crazy woman = great fuck. A familiar theme in various movies, and a popular consensus among some men. Even if were true, though, that still consigns crazy women to be mistresses and not wives. On a long term basis, I think I speak for 99% of men when I say I’d gladly accept a sex life that was less than “animal sex 24/7” in exchange for a wife I know won’t kill me in my sleep. The subcategory to this is, probably 80% of men would accept a sex life that was less than “animal sex 24/7” in exchange for a wife we knew would remain faithful to us. Great sex doesn’t make up for constant paranoia that the woman is cheating on you. And these great-sex-but-can’t-keep-her-panties-on women wonder why no man wants to marry them. (3) Do as we say, not as we do. Hollywood again gives us a movie warning against marital infidelity, yet we know how faithful Hollywood celebrities are to their spouses – no more so than any other Americans.