Chemistry Class

Reds. Both Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton have proven their chemical viability in many movies, but here they face off together as the Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky of leftist politics, flouting convention and mating with communist zeal. That Beatty and Keaton were lovers at the time is a fact you can read in every scene, from the early I'd-like-to-see-you-with-your-pants-off-Mr.-Reed garden screw to their silhouetted backdoor session years later in Russia. My neighbor Rose commented, "They were brilliant people, they fought all the time, and I think they fought so they could make up and get down to it." But it's the end, a simple romantic clinch, that generates this movie's highest interpersonal amperage. Remember the poster, the hottest, teariest, most intense movie hug ever? He's been stranded and sick in Leninist Russia, she had set out across northern Europe to find him, they see each other through a station crowd beside a war-torn train. Her desperation breaks into an exasperated smile, he practically collapses with joy, and they grab each other like mountain climbers scrabbling for rope. I've seen real-life newly weds hug less believably. Christ, I love movies.

The Fly. "Get the fuck outta here," said Danny the bartender when I asked if he thought Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis had chemistry in Tire Fly. Call me crazy--nobody agrees with me on this--but for as long as Jeff Goldblum remained 100 percent human and avoided shake 'n baking his DNA with an insect's, I think this was a pure, sweet and steamy romance with chemistry to burn. If you can forget about stuff like when the half-fly Goldblum vomits acid on some poor schmuck's ankle and dissolves it, you'll soak in an ultraviolet attraction so real it ended up in an offscreen marriage (and an offscreen divorce, but that's life). Geena Davis and Goldblum might seem like an unlikely pair until you check out the couples in other David Cronenberg movies: Jeremy Irons and Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers, Peter Weller and his typewriter in Naked Lunch, Jeremy Irons and John Lone in M. Butterfly, etc. Davis and Goldblum talk to each other like a pair of half-lidded cobras in heat--they are so right for each other they sometimes don't bother talking at all and respond by merely blinking slowly. This makes what happens next all the more upsetting, kind of like watching someone you really love become addicted to the Home Shopping Network.

Witness. Kelly, bathing bare-breasted and without dialogue to deliver (the best of both worlds); Harrison, wracked with worry as usual, peeping through the bathroom door. Plenty of whole milk and repressed passion, good morning America, how are ya? Lou, a restaurant owner I called in Elwood, Long Island, confessed, "That scene gave me an itch." Yeah, Lou and every other guy who's seen this film. Meanwhile, my wife and every other woman who's seen the film think the lantern-lit barn boogie to Sam Cooke takes the cake. "If only square dancing in gym class had been like this," she lamented. Another woman friend of mine claims that the heat in Witness comes from the sense that Harrison and Kelly "really adore each other. That big kiss they finally have? It's sexy because it's not cosmetic--they're not kissing for the camera."

The Last of the Mohicans. Hunka burnin' love Daniel Day-Lewis and doe-in-human-form Madeleine Stowe get some serious horsepower out of this Classics Illustrated chestnut, staring so often and so long at each other through the clouds of gun smoke I was surprised they even knew where they were half the time, much less where those nasty Hurons were. "It's more deeply stirring to my blood than any imagining could possibly have been," she says to the warrior-hippie-god with the coolest rawhide ensemble this side of Barbara Stanwyck in "The Big Valley," and no question about it, there's a whole lotta blood-stirrin' going on. "Whooof!" is how my friend Shari describes it. "It was all in the eyes. Their kiss was fantastic, but they could've been two pairs of disembodied eyes and still gotten the message across." Kissing is, however, a pivotal factor, and if you still need evidence of the primacy and illusiveness of sexual chemistry, compare Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer's discombobulated lip-mash in The Age of Innocence. Let's break this down:

Daniel + Madeleine=Thermonuclear radiation.

Daniel + Michelle=Bromo-seltzer.

Michelle + Mel (Tequila Sunrise)=Five-alarm chili.

Madeleine + Kevin (Revenge)=Day-old oatmeal.

Michelle + Jeff (The Fabulous Baker Boys)=Mardi Gras bonfire.

Madeleine + Jack (The Two Jakes)=Small napalm strike.

Michelle + Jack (The Witches of Eastwick)=Ram delay.

There you have it. If they could bottle the stuff, it'd be a perfect world, wouldn't it?

Sommersby. Janine, a Brooklyn high schooler I got on the phone after getting hung up on 21 times in a row, was the first to suggest this already forgotten Richard Gere-Jodie Foster honey. "From beginning to end they behaved as if they'd just had sex for the first time and couldn't wait for the second." I liked this movie a lot too, for much the same reason: the stars play silent sexual ping-pong for the whole first half of the movie, and rarely has physical intimacy been so convincing, which is especially surprising since Jodie Foster's been making films for over 20 years and this is her first true romantic lead. "They were both very warm and cuddly," my wife, the ardent Mel-lover, admitted. "It was the first movie to make me see why someone might fall in love with Richard Gere."

Basic Instinct. I'm including this leering mud wrestle of a movie because, with just about every guy I talked to, it popped up quickly and unbeckoned once the word "sexual" came from my lips--I never got to the "chemistry" part before some orangutan would blurt out "Sharon Stone!" You'd think they'd never seen the Cape of Good Hope before. For me, this movie is the sound of one hand jerking, and the only chemistry is the chemistry between Stone and her cigarette lighter, Stone and a block of ice, Stone and the panties that weren't there. But I believe in democracy, so here you are.

We can talk all day about which movies fire off our erotic mortar shell, which movie couples seem destined to go through their cinematic existence together trying to get into each other's knickers, between which actors subnuclear reactions occur and why. But what about the movies that, despite sweeping (or at least adequate) audience approval, have all the oomph of flat Fresca? Their very success kept nagging at me like a crotch crab. I'd like to ask America to take a close, careful look at itself and tell me why in the name of Mel they got off on these dodoes.

Indecent Proposal. Two words: Woody Harrelson. Two more words: Kill me.

The Bodyguard. IIIII--eeeee--IIIII--eeeee--IIIII will always HATE this wretched movie. Kevin and Whitney both seemed to be enjoying simultaneous Percodan habits, perhaps to kill their mutual pain over his haircut.

Damage. Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche gazing at each other like mountain goats in a snowstorm. He bangs her head against the floor during sex. Oooo baby.

The Bonfire of the Vanities/ A Stranger Among Us/ Shining Through / Born Yesterday. Not that any of these were hits, but Melanie Griffith must be doing something right regardless of the fact that her new breasts easily outclass even her ability to read dialogue believably. My favorite here is her amber-hued romance with the handsome Hasid in Stranger. Vai iz mir, as my mother-in-law would say.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Costner went through this whole movie looking like he'd just gotten up and hadn't had his first cup of coffee yet. He and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio barely seem capable of tolerating each other. Maybe it was his breath.

Sliver. Or as I like to call it, Mannequin Three: The Tedium.

Body of Evidence. "I'd just as soon see Willem Dafoe have sex with a Doberman." My friend Gerry said that.

The Lover. So much great sweaty sex we eventually become well aware we're not the ones having it. Otherwise, like watching lizards in the sun.

Boxing Helena. All right, so this was an outright bomb--maybe America can only be fooled so far. No one thought amputation-as-obsessive-love was very interesting, no one thought the controversy was very important (was there controversy or just the forecasting of controversy?), and no one wanted to see Julian Sands and Sherilyn Fenn--what great casting!--try to set fire to wet dirt. If you're on the lookout for movies with high caliber sexual artillery, stay away from Sands, Fenn, anyone named Lynch and any film dealing romantically with severed arms. That's the only sure advice I can give you. Otherwise, just like love or Lotto or Catholic roulette or moviegoing itself, it's a crapshoot. You've just got to sit back, scratch that itch, sip your complimentary cocktail and roll them bones.

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Michael Atkinson wrote about terrible '70s movies for the August '93 Movieline.

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