Nasir007 wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 4:05 am
I think you are on to something here. I think there aren't many positive or happy depictions of sex. Even desire for consummation, a perfectly positive reaction towards someone you love is played for laughs or as a bad character trait whereas it can just be an everyday character trait in a character. There aren't many happy scenes of two married or committed partners just happily indulging in sex. There has to be a tragic patina or something unsavory or some darkness cast over it in some ways. Gaspar Noe explicitly stated this as one of his reasons for making Love, essentially making the same argument, that there aren't many positive depictions of young people just being young and happy and making love. Rendering it as slightly ordinary and boring and commonplace reinforces its incredible naturalness as a positive act of shared mutual love and desire.
To bring it back to the current discussion, sex shown on screen stripped of context frustrates critics. Meaning it has to serve as a dark episode or a tragic catharsis or something of the sort. But stripped of that, just showing people alive and happy and having sex would seem questionable. And it is a valid concern - what does in fact deserve to be shown in a narrative? Rules of story-telling would posit that only moments and instances of inherent drama and tension that advance the narrative need be featured in a film or story.
But Kechiche is already seemingly challenging that narrative construction with Mektoub. He does not even essentially seem to be aiming for a 'story' or context as per the reports of the two Mektoub films. He seems content to just stage naturalistic tableaux of still-life's in motion with characters interacting and existing and being in a fictionally constructed frame and setting. He could even make pretensions of objectivity but for the fact that his camera while capturing the desires of his characters seemingly also captures his own. Baring unconfirmed reports of abuse, this mode of operation would leave the subjective judgement to each individual viewer as to not only their reading of the portrait of life presented on screen but also the manner in which it is presented.
Honestly I do tend to think its revealing of a more puritanical attitude that exists even in areas of society that might be viewed as unprudish, that onscreen sex will be much more easily accepted if it can be cast in a negative fashion, the domain of abuse or mental illness.
In Blue there does seem a pretty clear narrative reason for its presence to me, the first half of the film is spent playing a characters suppressed emotion and sexuality together to the degree the sex is ment to be a catharsis for both of these, I mean a lack of dialog doesn't automatically infer a lack of emotional content as you can see elsewhere in the film where he spends a lot of time showing the characters emotional reaction without dialog. In the second half of the film were the plot shifts away from this we no longer see nearly as much such content.
I wouldn't say Mektoub is purely a tableaux, in the first half anywhere there is some narrative there mostly concerned with the(pretty clearly semi autobiographical) lead characters potential romance and his career direction but its gotten across in a very defuse fashion with a lot of scene setting involving other characters. There does seem to be a clear shift more towards valuing the style and scene setting over narrative to the degree I can imagine it not being of as much interest to people who don't enjoy that style.
tenia wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 4:31 am
Blue has been very well received, at least in France, but I don't think it was different elsewhere. The controversy solely came from the reports over the conflicting shooting, followed by Seydoux and Exarchopoulos' statement they wouldn't work again with Kechiche if offered to, followed by Kechiche's statement the movie shouldn't be released anymore because it was soiled too much by all this talk.
In France, we've had a severe debate around same-sexe marriage that was supposed to be quick and smooth but that lasted forever (because we're stupid that way), and the movie's Palme d'Or happen to be right in the middle of that.
There were some concerned reports that the sex scenes, as discussed above, were reflecting of Kechiche's being a heterosexual man and showing this lesbian romance and sex purely from this point of view, but they were way less audible amongst the ton of praise the movie got.
I'm not saying the main point being made is wrong, but that Blue most certainly isn't really a good illustration, especially because the movie convoques other factors.
It was initially well received but I would argue there was quite quickly a backlash that was what really drove the publicity of the fued, there seemed to be a strong desire to paint the sex within the film as a product of onset abuse. Again I don't remember any claims that this was the case with the stories relating to other aspects of the production, if it was I'd have thought it would have come out at that point. Doesn't mean he might not moved towards more abusive ways of filming such content I spose but again the desire for this to be the case in the media makes me wary of judging this to be the case based on quite unsubstantiated stories.
Honestly as a heterosexual man I have no experience of the reality of lesbian sex but the idea of any kind of "standard" sexual behaviour for an entire population seems like questionable anyway regardless of sexual persuasion, I could imagine for example if he'd shown some kind of penatrive sex he'd have been accused of looking to bringing a heterosexual viewpoint to it as well, indeed I suspect he didn't for that very reason. Really though I tend to think that whole argument seems a bit shallow, surely the sexual mechanics involved is of secondary importance to the intended dramatic effect? Showing that a lesbian/bisexual woman has a strong physical attraction to another woman doesn't really seem like a "male" viewpoint to me.
Again though I tend to think besides the sex itself politics came into play with a lot of the reaction. You have a film that on the face of it you'd expect to be concerned with lesbian/queer issues in which the character in the closet is enlightened by the openly lesbian character, instead you get a film that's more concerned with class and the lesbian character is painted in a less perfect fashion(although I think still a respectful and human one compared to a lot of depictions of lesbians on film). I remember the author of the graphic novel claiming that he'd "hijacked" her story which to some extent is a reasonable claim(that Kechiche himself pretty much admitted) but I don't think that automatically makes it a negative one. I suspect a lot of defensive reaction kicked in at that point, would a film in which a lesbian character and liberal intelligentsia is shown in a more purely positive fashion have faced so much criticism about its sex? I don't think it would have personally.
You could maybe make some comment as well that the idea you need to have personal experience of race/gender/sexuality in order to portray it being so popular in the media is rather at odds with the position on class, someone from a well off middle class background portraying people from a working class background does not seem to be raised as a negative nearly as often.