Return to Chemistry Class

Val Kilmer and Nicole Kidman in Batman Forever

Kidman is supposed to be a brilliant psychologist here, but she's such a wild-eyed slut you have to assume she screwed her way to a doctorate. Kilmer doesn't have Michael Keaton's vulnerability--you gel the sense this guy likes being a fetishistic nut job in a hard rubber suit, thank you very much--but his glowering machismo is the perfect foil for Kidman's voracious manhandler. Once again, fetishism reigns; she has no interest in Bruce Wayne--too handsome and wealthy, I guess--but only in Batman the Giant Walking Dildo. When they meet, she's practically raving with lust, while he's wondering how he could get naked and still be Batman--a sociosexual conundrum for superheroes everywhere. Especially those whose black body armor makes women act like alley cats.

Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys

Two show-biz orphans squinting bitterly through a fog of cigarette smoke. Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Bridges dance together on a hotel veranda and think better of having the sex that any one of us could die happy having had. "Oh God." Pfeiffer sighs dizzily, staggering for a moment in the moonlight. These two really are nitro and glycerin, all the way to the post-New Year's Eve hack-rub scene, which is an indisputable landmark in back-rub scene history. Jeff is just dispensing a helpful, therapeutic hand here, remember, as he unzips her dress down to her ass, plays "Sweet Rosie O'Grady" lightly on her spine and then slips around and grabs her frontal lobes. We should've seen it coming, of course, the way Pfeiffer undulated on top of the piano singing "Makin' Whoopee" (which, as we all know, is an old euphemism for giving someone a massage). She's gazing at Bridges, crooning, surging and heaving like an otter in estrus--even Catwoman didn't go this far. If Bridges didn't take her to bed finally, he'd probably wake up to find her sitting on his alarm clock wailing for it to go off.

Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell in Groundhog Day

No matter how much you may like them, it seems unlikely that either Bill Murray or Andie MacDowell would develop chemistry with anyone, much less each other. But the berserk, falling-dominoes form of this movie, which takes place on a single day repeated thousands of times, makes it not only believable but inevitable. I knew, as many unattractive, acne-tortured high school nimrods did, that being amusing was often the only way into a girl's Skivvies, and MacDowell's exactly the kind of too-pretty, warm-cider-with-a-cinnamon-stick type of girl that might dig you if you made her laugh hard enough. Murray's weaselly schmuck tries every dishonest thing he can think of to get MacDowell's legs open, but eventually he learns to just relax, be nice to everybody and keep the jokes coming. Naturally, he gets laid. I could've told him.

Now, I didn't buy MacDowell as the Laura Ashley-coordinated slut from Four Weddings and a Funeral, but I buy her here, going all trancelike and breathy whenever Murray begins to seem a little too perfect. The antique- B&B-four-poster sex they have is left up to our imaginations, and that's a good thing considering who we're talking about, and considering that movies rarely gel actual sex right.

So, do we know anything more, anything empirically useful, about sexual chemistry than we did before? Let's recap:

• It's fun to see women in petticoats get horny

• Michelle Pfeiffer can have chemistry with anyone as long as she's miserable

• Funny can be sexy, and funny is essential if the actor is ugly and/or pockmarked

• If I had to decide between belly-bumping with Julie Delpy, Helena Bonham Carter or Meryl Streep circa 1985, my head would explode

Well, we may not know much, but we know more than whoever's responsible for Exit to Eden. Real sexual chemistry is a rare beast, but we're never discouraged in our search because we know movies are a zoo, and actors are the rhesus monkeys: most of the lime nothing much is going on in the monkey house, but every now and then you catch the bastards bent over a branch, startled, but halfway to kingdom come.

________________________________________

Michael Atkinson wrote about aging actors in the November 1995 Movieline.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5