Real Bodies Bare All on the Big Screen By LINDA LEE
TORONTO
In the new British movie "The Mother," which was shown here at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, the title character, a woman in her 60's who has an affair with her daughter's boyfriend, says: "When I was 30 I would have been happy to take my clothes off, but nobody asked me. Now I'm going to insist on it."
She is in good company here, as the talk of the festival — aside from the extravagant violence — is the extravagant amount of skin exposed and the focus on sex, including sex that doesn't involve just 20-somethings.
William H. Macy, 53, in "The Cooler"; Meg Ryan, 41, in "In the Cut"; Anne Reid, 68, who plays the title character in "The Mother"; and Sean Penn, 43, in "21 Grams," which will close the New York Film Festival this year on Oct. 19, all show up in nude and seminude love scenes. Even Anthony Hopkins, 65, shows a pec or two as a 71-year-old professor in "The Human Stain" who is rejuvenated by an affair with a woman played by Nicole Kidman.
"We've always had extreme sex here at the festival, but there is definitely more of it this year," especially in French films like "Twentynine Palms," said Piers Handling, director of the festival, which concluded yesterday. "There's a real interest and curiosity about extreme behavior."
Mr. Penn plays a sickly math professor in "21 Grams," but from what audiences can see of him lying face-down in bed, after a sex scene with Naomi Watts (playing the wife of the man whose donated heart he received), his body has stood up quite well. Other actors, like Mr. Hopkins, more closely resemble audience members, especially the aging baby boomers.
"I was born in 1950, and there's a whole bunch of us," said Mr. Macy, who has a protracted nude love scene with Maria Bello in "The Cooler." So many people of his generation, he said, have lost little of the interest in sex they had in their 20's. Mr. Macy, whose character did not appear to have spent much time with a personal trainer, added that he wished he could have played a nude scene in the movies when was younger.
But that, said Edward R. Pressman, a producer of "The Cooler," is the point. "The idea of having Bill doing a love scene is kind of a refreshingly new event in films," he said. "What makes the movie work is that Bill is Everyman."
Jane Campion, 49, who directed "In the Cut," is eager to see older, more realistic physiques in love scenes. "I love all sorts of odd, different bodies," she said. And, when seeing too many perfect bodies becomes routine, seeing real-looking bodies in sex scenes becomes titillating.
In "In the Cut," a gritty thriller, Ms. Ryan is seen nude in a graphic sex scene with Mark Ruffalo, and in a scene in which she simulates masturbation. Clint Culpepper, president of Screen Gems, which made the movie, said it reminded him of the movies of his youth. "I grew up loving movies from the 70's like `Klute' and `Looking for Mr. Goodbar,' " he said. "I think that there are trends in film, and we're seeing one here. It started last year with `Unfaithful.' That was a sexually erotic movie, and the first of its kind in a long time."
Mr. Culpepper was one of several executives to express frustration with Hollywood's showing sex as something for the nubile young. "Our film shows mature sex between a mature man and woman," he said. "It's erotic because it hasn't been seen much in films. It could be part of a new wave, yeah, and I think it's about time."
Craig Baumgarten, who worked with the executive producer on the landmark erotic film "9 1/2 Weeks" from 1986, said that actors were safe showing off bodies, even imperfect ones, as long as the movies were well received. "I don't know anyone whose career has been ruined by being sexy," he said. Moreover, he said, for an actor whose career might be stalled, shedding clothes can open up new possibilities. "Clearly Meg Ryan did `In the Cut' to broaden the spectrum," he said, sitting over a glass of Maker's Mark at Pangaea in Toronto on Thursday night. "People will say, `I never thought of Meg Ryan like that.' "
But, he warns, familiarity breeds disinterest. "If you do it once, everyone wants to see it — after that, it's not really a big deal," he said. "When Sharon Stone does it again, who cares?"
Chuck Binder, a talent manager based in Los Angeles who managed Ms. Stone during her "Basic Instinct" days, and currently manages Daryl Hannah, among others, points out that with Botox and plastic surgery, more and more older actors can do nude scenes. "They look like they're 30," he said. "And what doesn't look great, edit around it." (Ms. Ryan looks great in her nude scenes in "In the Cut," but buff she is not; her extreme frailty lends her a look of vulnerable pubescence.) Mr. Ruffalo explained that he and Ms. Ryan were "given reassurances beforehand" that they would have final say on what was shown in "In the Cut."
Despite contract negotiations over just what is shown and for how long, the most important thing, actors will say, is trusting the director. "I was never worried about it," Ms. Ryan said at a news conference. "It was Jane, and the script was oddly familiar to me."
As for which characters audiences will accept as sex objects, Pepper Schwartz, the author of "Everything You Know About Love and Sex Is Wrong" (2000), believes television may be the guide. "Tony Soprano, and the unlikely characters on reality television shows," she said, "have desensitized us to seeing real people, heavier people, older people, on screen." And she still considers Mr. Hopkins "fit and vital and virile."
She should be elated, then, by the forthcoming release of "The Mother," which might be considered a companion piece to the recent book "A Round-Heeled Woman," Jane Juska's report on her sex life at the age of 66. Michael Barker, a head of Sony Pictures Classics, which is releasing "The Mother," said its vision of extreme sex is what attracted him. "The time when `Y Tu Mamá También' came out, that was a bellwether," he said. "We decided then that the next film we saw that pushed the boundaries in a similar sort of bold way, we would buy it. And that was `The Mother.' We don't think enough about older people and the possibility of intense passion."
"Passion is not just something for the impulsive young," he added.
But we shouldn't expect an onslaught of pudgy middle-aged sex, said Timothy Gray, managing editor at Variety. "I do think the pendulum is swinging," he said, and that "increasingly audiences are accepting that it is O.K. to look normal and have sex." Nevertheless, he said, movies at film festivals are more likely to show "tasteful, intelligent adult folks selling sex and not `Real World Cancún.' "
----------------- Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/fashion/14NUDE.html?ex=1064116800&en=67ef9be541a91217&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE =========
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