Lots of odd sex causes kink fatigue, says DONALD CLARKE
WRITING IN AN era when readers are allowed – indeed encouraged – to comment on facetious gibberish, the Cannes correspondent has to be cautious about offering too many complaints. Whine about queues or bureaucracy and you can expect (reasonably enough) a volley of comments in the vein of, “Oh poor you. Boo, hoo! Is swanning about in the south of France getting you down?”
That noted, something must be said about the number of transgressive sex acts we have to endure. The international porn bandits used to hold their annual jamboree at the same time as the main festival. Happily, that event has moved on but, in the main competition alone, we hard-working film writers are forced to suffer a truly staggering array of peccadilloes and perversions. Take Bertrand Bonello's ghastly House of Tolerance. Given that the film concerns affairs at a brothel during La Belle Epoque, it was to be expected that there would be a degree of sexy sexy going on. But still. A poor woman gets tied up and has her cheeks slashed to ribbons while some some toff heaves away on top of her. Later a brothel inmate weeps a substance that only usually emerges from certain male appendages. There's no need for that sort of thing. Then we have Julia Leigh's reviled Sleeping Beautywhich features endless scenes in which young Emily Browning's character, a sex worker, removes her clothes and lies beside lascivious old men while they fondle her and use the most appalling language. You didn't get that in the Disney version.
There’s more. Markus Schleinzer’s very impressive – if hugely disturbing – Michael concerns a paedophile who imprisons a young boy in his basement. Thankfully no sex acts are shown but the sideways allusions to what goes on are still enough to turn the stomach.
At time of writing, Screenwriter had yet to see the new Lars Von Trier film. One can only imagine what the Great Dane – having chopped off various unmentionables in 2009’s Antichrist – has in store for us.
Consider that many films are screened at 8.30am and you’ll get some sense of how we suffer to keep you informed. A kind of kink fatigue sets in.
Viewers of grown-up cinema (as apposed to “adult cinema”, which is something else entirely) tend, throughout their movie-going careers, to get steadily acclimatised to depictions of weird or inappropriate sex acts. One starts off feeling decidedly unnerved by the experience. By early middle-age, a near-total acceptance will have set in.
It’s only when somebody in a Von Trier or Michael Haneke film sets to the genitals with sharp objects that the experienced cineaste finds themselves squirming. What’s to be done? Obviously, we want film-makers to have the freedom to depict whatever perversion they please, just not before breakfast, please.
