Scenes of Erotica #4

June 10, 2006
Category: Erotic Cinema, Sexblogs

The world’s most controversial film? If you’re looking to keep movie buffs and Conservative party counsellors occupied for a few hours down at your local bar, then you could do worse than lob that question into the mix. Of course, the world’s most controversial film is … going to be determined according to your own perspective and bête-noirs. Perhaps you find blood and gore and horror to be utterly objectionable, in which case something like “Last House on the Left” or “I Spit On Your Grave” might figure high upon your list. Or you might feel that films which sully religious beliefs deserve particular scorn, so “The Last Temptation of Christ” or “The Devils” might be top of your inventory.

But if the cinematic depiction of sex is the genre that leaves you gnashing and grinding your teeth, then there’s a fair chance that top of your selections will be “Crash”. David Cronenberg’s 1996 blend of colliding automobiles and deviant sexuality recently came in at #3 in a list of the 10 most controversial films compiled by The Guardian newspaper.

Much has been written about Crash; about its motives and its messages, its art and its merit. Some of what has been written has been praiseworthy, while a good deal of text devoted to the film has been dismissive, if not outright derisive. I don’t intend debating the film, or critiquing it though. This isn’t Film Studies 101. I just want to talk about a sex scene that I happen to find arousing.

And saying that word - arousing - can be a risky thing to do when you’re talking about Crash. Mention the two things in the same sentence in the wrong company, and you might well receive looks only a few degrees removed from those normally reserved for paedophiles and rapists. Crash is a film whose depiction of sexuality bewilders and frightens many viewers, so confessing that there are aspects to it that you find stimulating can be tantamount to painting “unclean” on your forehead. It may have won a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, but it also provoked the British critic Alexander Walker to call it “a movie beyond the bounds of depravity.”

Nevertheless, there are aspects to Crash that I find arousing. As far as I’m concerned, Deborah Kara Unger is an incredibly desirable woman (I fell instantly in lust with her when she showed her red bra to Michael Douglas in The Game) and she exudes a languid, almost hypnotic sexuality throughout the film. Catherine Ballard (Unger’s character) reminds me a little of Kathleen Turner in Body Heat; husky, sexually rapacious, single-minded and with little in the way of conscience. True, Catherine lacks much of Matty Walker’s animation (as well as her murderous plan) but the resonance is there.

And Catherine’s lingerie preference for white suspender belt, tan stockings and no panties happens to be one of my personal favourites too. The sight of her attired just so, wordlessly offering herself to a handsome stranger’s touch in an aircraft hanger is stirring, as is the image of her easing her skirt up her legs, offering her naked buttocks to her husband as she stands on the balcony of their apartment, looking out across the busy freeways below.

Crash - the balcony scene

There are other stimulating scenes too. Holly Hunter’s utter desperation to shed her clothes and get James Spader inside her for the first time in the back of a car parked at the airport. Vaughn - the character portrayed by Elias Koteas - fucking a prostitute in the back seat of his battered Lincoln motor car while Spader drives them along a succession of near-deserted nocturnal freeways.

But for me, the stand-out scene comes some forty minutes into the film’s running time. Spader and Unger are making love in their bedroom. They’re both naked, lying on their sides, Spader slowly thrusting into his wife from behind. The sex is fluid, leisurely. As the camera slowly advances upon the marital bed, Unger asks her husband a series of questions about Vaughn, the deviant spider who occupies the centre of Crash’s twisted web.

Vaughn becomes the movie’s driving force, the focal point about which the twisted sexual desires of the other characters swirl and coalesce. Catherine Ballard is drawn to him, fascinated by his dark persona, his scarred body, his oversized, rusted Lincoln. “He must have fucked a lot of women in that car,” she breathes. “It must smell of semen.” Her excitement at the thought of Vaughn’s scarred penis - suggested to have been damaged in a motorcycle accident - is evident. She talks to and questions her husband constantly. “Is he circumcised? Can you imagine what his anus looks like? Describe it to me.” She asks Spader if he has fantasised about sodomizing Vaughn, about sucking his cock, if he knows how different the taste of semen can be. It is as much these thoughts as her husband’s thrusts that propel her into orgasm.

Crash - the bedroom scene

It’s not what Catherine Ballard says that I find arousing. It’s the fact that she’s talking, the way that she’s talking that I find engaging, that makes the scene so sensual and erotic in my opinion. The Ballard’s have evidently reached a point in their marriage where vanilla sex has ceased to excite them to the levels it once did, to the levels of experience that they crave, that they need. That’s why the film opens with Catherine being fucked by a stranger in an aircraft hanger, followed immediately by a scene of her husband fucking one of his assistants at work, and then one of the couple together at home, sharing tales of their adventures. They both need something more. And in this scene, it’s Catherine that seeks to elevate their lovemaking to another level; sharing her fantasies openly and explicitly to excite both herself and her husband; engaging their minds and their imaginations to enhance their physical responses. The pleasure of their flesh is in the now, but Catherine spices it with the exciting possibilities of the future. And it’s that willingness, that desire to break through conventional boundaries that I find so appealing. I am both aroused by and made envious of her genuine desire - of their desire - to explore sex so completely together.

Crash - the aircraft hanger scene

For myself, I don’t much enjoy silence during sex. I hate it when I feel obliged to be silent. It makes me feel stifled, choked. I love communicating, telling my lover what I’m going to do to her next, being told what she wants to feel, what she wants to do to me, with me, in return. I love listening to her fantasies, sharing my own, building new and exciting futures together. It takes the experience of lovemaking, of fucking, beyond the purely physical. It enhances it, expands upon it. But it only works if I know that her words, her fantasies are genuine: if she’s going through the motions purely for my benefit, because she knows it’s what I want, then she might as well save her energy.

And that’s why I find Catherine Ballard so appealing, so arousing. Because of the authenticity of her desire, and the way in which she expresses it. Yes, I’d take a ride in the passenger seat of Catherine’s MX5 any day.

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3 Comments

  1. Anastasia on June 10th, 2006
    1

    I saw the film quite a while back, a year after its release, and interestingly enough at that time it hit me in a different way. At that time I didn’t know (to use the term) vanilla, and I found it all perplexing but the film (as it unfolded) held me there to the screen. I’ve found it difficult to see Spader in an erotic context (and this originated from the time I saw him in Sex, Lies and Videotape) and I remember being more drawn to Koteas’ character because it strayed from the conventional boundaries, so I could see what she/her character finds intriguing in Koteas.

    Like you mention,the couple requiring to step over the conventional line that basically could act to separate them totally (through a buildup of ennui etc, was the core issue that stood out most to me, and at that time it had an impact in that it explored this aspect on a more detailed level than films like Fatal Attraction, that were too conventional (husband has affair, mistress turns psycho, she is killed and the marriage is ‘back on’, just like that, Hollywood style), it made me examine my own view of relationships in the long term.

    Ana, you’re not alone in experiencing difficulty in viewing Spader in the context of erotic protagonist. I’m not sure exactly why I feel that way. I like the man well enough as an actor. It just seems to be an instinctive reaction, one that I experienced with Crash, as well as with Sex, Lies and Videotape, White Palace (oh, for the chance to share a bed with Susan Sarandon!) and even Secretary (though perhaps less of an anti-reaction here, since his role in this film draws more effectively on Spader’s apparent quirkiness).

    I’d certainly agree that Vaughn is the less bland, more magnetic character. I’d go as far to suggest that James Ballard is actually pretty passive for a man supposedly engaged on a hedonistic, sexual quest intended to banish the curse of ennui. To my eyes, the only time Ballard appears to be fully engaged is in the brief scene when he’s fucking his assistant at the beginning of the movie. After that, things just seem to happen to him, and he almost drifts through his subsequent encounters.

    If nothing else, Crash does take an exceptionally un-Hollywood approach to the reality of boredom in a marriage. The truth is (as far as I’m concerned) no long-term relationship can exist without ennui raising its unwelcome head at some point (perhaps even multiple points), and it is at those times when the relationship is most vulnerable to the temptations and excesses that lie in wait. Crash portrays a couple who initially appear to be in complete control of their lives and their desires, and yet by the end of the film, have perhaps never been so vulnerable…

    ~EA

  2. aurumgirl on June 10th, 2006
    2

    Years after watching that film I still can’t think of the Gardiner Expressway (that highway Unger is staring out at, in the photo you’ve included here) as something separate from its “role” in Crash. There is definitely something extremely erotic and very “real-human-animal” about all of Cronenberg’s bedroom scenes, precisely what you describe here. It’s like he refuses to portray people as the kind of phoney, make-believe sexually dead depictions we see in your typical Hollywood film, like he wants you to be aroused by their need, which is always undisguised and therefore frightening…but also, always something you have to try and sympathise with, and feel on your own terms.

    I also like, very much, that the women in his films have the same kind of real drive that their male counterparts do–they want to fuck, on their terms, and they never want to apologize for that. I think he’s unique as a filmmaker, for that reason alone.

    Crash made me quite worried (it is compelling and repulsive at the same time, like most of his films), when I first saw it, but I’ve thought about it for years now. It isn’t what I’d call “erotic” in the typical sense–but the way it engages the intellect, the senses (including the ones registering fear and pain), and the emotions makes it very powerful.

    I gather Cronenberg feels the same way about women’s desire as you do, EA; and that makes him a pretty attractive director to me.

    I’m in complete accord with all of your takes on Crash, AG. Sex in the movies quickly becomes bland and repetitive unless the writer and the director give you the opportunity to engage with the protagonists’ genuine needs and desires. It’s that opportunity along with the depiction of sexual congress which (IMHO) makes for a truly erotic and arousing sex scene.

    The way Cronenberg deals with the subject of sex (in fact, the way that he deals with all of his material) does make him one of the most intelligent directors working in cinema today. His films do indeed engage all of our thoughts, senses and emotions, and that can sometimes make for uncomfortable viewing. It also invariably results in a far more rewarding experience than is cinematically typical. I can’t help but feel a little wistful when considering the prospect of a Basic Instinct 2 directed by him.

    As to my sharing the same attitude towards women’s desire as Mr Cronenberg … thank you for the wonderful complement.

    ~EA

  3. debo on March 1st, 2007
    3

    what a sexy fucking movie man !!!!!!!!!!! iam also ready for all this. all set to be smooched and fucked

    I’m glad you enjoyed this particular selection, Debo…

    ~EA

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