'erotic' cinema?

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I prefer porn but I guess Querelle is erotic at a push, it's hard to watch it now without seeing all the things that have referenced it since though. I'm talking to you, Jean Paul Gaultier. I know you're reading.
 

routes

we can delay.ay.ay...
whats the diff between genuinely sexy and erotic btw? is the latter just more sensual?

i dunno but i like what Zhao wrote there about Kar Wei. maybe 'erotic' is ethereal, the unacknowledged promise of something. 'sexy' is more tangible, more real, i think.

the heroine of the Medem film, 'La Ardilla Roja' (the red squirrel) has a vagina that can bite like a squirrel. i love how literally it's treated in the film, hilarious.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Changing the angle of the thread slightly, what are the most artistic porn movies out there? Whenever I suggest watching porn with a girl, they always seem turned off by the cheapness and crassness of it. It would be good to find something that's a little more tasteful, but still too explicit to be shown on Channel 5."
I've mentioned it several times before here but there is a dark as fuck porn film called Through The Looking Glass (nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland) which I borrowed from a friend. He said that there are loads of art-films that have ended up being porn but this is the only porn he knew of that ended up as an art-film. It's too nasty to be erotic though in my opinion (basic synopsis is the heroine recalls being abused by her father who then comes back through the mirror and forces her to suck him off before dragging her off to a weird and arid desert hell where she will be raped and tortured eternally as loads of skinny impotent men masturbate and talk about their credit cards being declined).

"read erotic lit instead."
Just reading The Perfumed Garden (Sir Richard Burton's translation) but to be honest it's more interesting for the notes that Burton made and the further notes for this sixties edition and what they say about attitudes at the times.
The mechanics of the different positions and different names for different types of virile member (eg Al Hezzaz, the rummager "it is named thus because as soon as it penetrates into the vulva it begins to rummage about vigorously until it has appeased its passion") are interesting up to a point although they do become just that - mechanical. The stories are kinda fun but as Burton removed all the homo and paedo ones and the sixties publisher removed the bestiality stuff (as well as a number of positions that they deemed too difficult to attempt) it's clear that I'm reading a very watered down version.
More interesting sociologically than erotic I'd say. Arguably most interesting are the bits at the start where they tie themselves in knots differentiating porn (bad) from instructional and uplifting books (good). Guess which category The Perfumed Garden is in?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I'd like to see more of the Rinse Dream stuff, I guess that's art-porn. The only one I've seen is Cafe Flesh but one day I'll watch the others I suppose.
Dunno what exactly happened here in this clip from Night Dreams but it looks intriguing


Trailer for the film here


and a scene from Cafe Flesh here

 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i was just about to post cafe flesh as it popped into my head thinking about this thread... i seriously want to see more of rinse dreams films.
 

slowtrain

Well-known member
I agree with zhao about wong kar-wai as well.

I think that sex scenes are almost always boring as fuck.

When I watch "real" porn, I just watch the bits at the beginning, and knowing that soon those two people will be completely naked and fucking each other to bits is the only hot bit. Actually watching them do it is dead boring.

I would like to see that Through The Looking Glass movie very much, it sounds good.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
the boredom of the main act in porn is also cos theyre incredibly shit actors.

i propose idlerich burn everyone in this thread copies of through the looking glass. i would also propose we all watch it together, but that would be a bit weird.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Unfortunately I don't have it any more. Should be available somewhere though I guess. I think that when I watched it the fact that the film was corrupted and made their voices sound like aliens from about the half-way mark to the end added something.
 

slowtrain

Well-known member
I will spend my life looking for this film.

I have written it down in my diary:

"through the looking glass (porno) - find"
 

bruno

est malade
first, the erotic. i recommend (as a matter of policy) walerian borowczyk, in particular the contes immoraux. these are four short films, each one a little gem: impeccable sets, music, humour, women, objects, perfection in short. impossible to watch this and not be aroused and elevated in equal measure.

and porn, as per bangpuss' request. i think it's possible to have sex, with sounds and bodily fluids and so on, very explicit, filmed in such a way that transcends mechanical porn, becoming something of worth while achieving the primal excitement/lust that is the whole point of porn. for me there are two forms that do this: one naturalist, sex as-is without artifice, with emphasis on feeling and pace, the other fantasist in the libertine tradition, with elaborate perversion or inversion of the social order. i can recommend some fabricated things along the lines of the above, two japanese, two australian:

tohjiro's mourning dress sisters, 2003
two sisters lose their parents and find solace in each other. sloppy kissing, fondling, flogging each other with flowers, plaintive moaning, etc. ensue. it's drawn out, languid, absurd, and it works beautifully.

clockwork orange lesbian edition, 2007
sadistic lesbian warden/guards torment the female contingent in this dystopian women-in-prison-type thing. much flogging, forced sex and general nastiness befalls the unlucky prisoners, who accept their fate with surprisingly tender resignation.

abbywinters' beck & lea, 2008
two normal-looking girls having sex, looking very comfortable with each other, birds chirping in the background, sunny room, etc. at their best, these videos are cute, tasteful, explicit and sexually arousing at the same time.

abbywinters' cleo and larissa, 2009
this one sees a couple in a coffee shop, closeups of lips, eyes, gestures, kissing on the way home, a build-up that enhances the effect of seeing the girls in bed later in the video.

in general i find the david hamilton school of languid pastoral nudity ideal, even the less inspired hamilton-derivative disco-soundtracked 80s stuff like chris nikolson's lovely vhs magazine is worth watching. the more recent examples of this are derivative and kitsch along the lines of galitsin, and need to be muted because of the russian penchant for horrible techno, but worth watching if you're desperate.

there are oddities that are not really porn, but borderline pornographic, koji wakamatsu's embryo hunts in secret comes to mind.

there is also a lot of seventies/eighties middle ground semi-pornographic and surreal-pornographic stuff that is interesting: the carefree post-franco debauchery of la caliente niña julieta, the crass, inept porn of jess franco, le sexe qui parle, the porn-infused cinema from stylish to crass with leonora fani, ilona staller. some not necessarily exciting, but interesting visually and as artifacts of the time.

so there you have it, porn and stuff. clearly i have a lot of time on my hands.
 

bruno

est malade
I think that sex scenes are almost always boring as fuck.

When I watch "real" porn, I just watch the bits at the beginning, and knowing that soon those two people will be completely naked and fucking each other to bits is the only hot bit. Actually watching them do it is dead boring.
i think tenderness is the crucial thing, tenderness and pace. without this, sex is dull, mechanic and short, especially in film.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"first, the erotic. i recommend (as a matter of policy) walerian borowczyk, in particular the contes immoraux. these are four short films, each one a little gem: impeccable sets, music, humour, women, objects, perfection in short. impossible to watch this and not be aroused and elevated in equal measure."
La Maree (The Tide) from this is excellent.


Based on a short story by Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues which is also worth reading. The gist of the plot is that the orally fixated boy who is obsessed with the sea takes his young cousin to an isolated spot on the beach and forces her to suck his penis in time with the tide so that he comes in her mouth precisely at high tide (hence the tide chart in the images above).
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
i think tenderness is the crucial thing, tenderness and pace. without this, sex is dull, mechanic and short, especially in film.

It depends what you're going for really, though. When you watch amateur porn, there are all sorts of types of things people do that aren't depicted - laughing alot, for one - or roleplay scenarios that just aren't usuallt there in 'erotic' films, which are usually about seduction, or sex scenes in films, which are usually shot and invented by the male director, a curious branch of the heterosexist man.
 

bruno

est malade
La Maree (The Tide) from this is excellent.

it is. i've yet to read p. de mandiargues but mean to, i'm hopelessly behind in my reading. i also need to see pre-68 borowczyk.

It depends what you're going for really, though. When you watch amateur porn, there are all sorts of types of things people do that aren't depicted - laughing alot, for one - or roleplay scenarios that just aren't usuallt there in 'erotic' films, which are usually about seduction, or sex scenes in films, which are usually shot and invented by the male director, a curious branch of the heterosexist man.

absolutely, i love this aspect of amateur stuff as well, but i'm also not against lack of humour/tenderness/compassion, it's personal preference and fantasy. and it's in flux, domination was not attractive to me before, and now it is to an extent. i hope i don't end up like the character in embryo hunts at dawn, being mean and tying people up.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"it is. i've yet to read p. de mandiargues but mean to, i'm hopelessly behind in my reading. i also need to see pre-68 borowczyk."
He also wrote Girl on a Motorcycle which was made into a film with Alain Delon and Marianne Faithful, I wouldn't especially recommend either but format but it's an enjoyable enough story.
Early Borowczyk - Jeux des Anges is good, I think I watched that on youtube. Also he did another animated film with Chris Marker. Not as good as I hoped. I've had his version of Jekyll and Hyde recommended to me but I haven't got round to it (that's later though).
 

bruno

est malade
He also wrote Girl on a Motorcycle which was made into a film with Alain Delon and Marianne Faithful, I wouldn't especially recommend either but format but it's an enjoyable enough story.
Early Borowczyk - Jeux des Anges is good, I think I watched that on youtube. Also he did another animated film with Chris Marker. Not as good as I hoped. I've had his version of Jekyll and Hyde recommended to me but I haven't got round to it (that's later though).
cool. i think i saw the one with marker, i don't remember much about it to be honest.

on the subject of erotic cinema, houellebecq did a short (i forget the name) where only women are left on earth, it's exciting in a twisted way.
 

bnek

Well-known member
Warm-Water-Under-a-Red-Bridge-2001-J-Movie.jpg
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Someone (who shall remain nameless) sent me this - I dunno if it's Rinse Dream but it seems to be very much in the style of the things of his I've seen, right down to the music and the weird bearded man watching from the tv. It's definitely hardcore pornography though so not safe for work

[video]http://www.redtube.com/63752[/video]

I'm not sure "Kitchen Bang for Sexy Housewife" does it justice though - how come they don't mention the sinister man on the tv in the background who seems to be controlling everything that happens?
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
thread related, self generated spam:

back on topic though, i really want to see more rinse dream stuff, i googled night dreams but all i got was some playboy dvd. his dr caligari remake seems to be online though, and it looks good.
 
Last edited:

stephenk

Well-known member
night dreams is fucked up and hallucinatory and worth a watch but doesn't touch the amazing trippy tension - and simultaneously successful erotica - of cafe flesh imo. i haven't been able to track down any of his other stuff though.
 
Top