Not Enough Wild Things

While a movie like The Object of My Affection takes off from a concept that precludes our sexual gratification, some movies simply consider themselves too high-minded to give baser instincts any sway in the story at all. It's just as well, I suppose, that we didn't have Robert Redford humping Kristin Scott Thomas in the barn in The Horse Whisperer. High-mindedness has its place. But one place high-mindedness should not be is in a film with Demi Moore. I mean no insubordination or slight by that. To the contrary, Ms. Moore should consider it a compliment. Demi knows sex--she rocked in Disclosure. Demi knows romance--if you didn't shed a tear watching Ghost, you poison kittens for a living.

Why then, in the name of Adam and Eve, do you put Demi Moore in a film with Tom Cruise and make certain that the closest they get to having sex is banging Dungeness crab claws together in a seafood bar? The reason is that A Few Good Men, a classic of '90s chastity, was intent on advancing a lot of high-falutin' ideas about honor and courage, and we're supposed to believe that in the real world, attractive men and alluring women in the pursuit of honor and courage in military law don't reach for the Trojans at the drop of a gavel and wind up with each other's skin under their fingernails. Fair enough--if the real world is Salt Lake City. But this film takes place in bad old D.C., and even if it didn't, why cast Demi Moore if you're not going to use Demi Moore? It's like asking Mark McGwire to bunt. Sexuality is given lip service in A Few Good Men-- Cruise uses a baseball bat as a thinking stick and gets to utter throwaway lines to Moore like, "Wow--I'm sexually aroused, Commander." This is what you put a star like Tom Cruise up to when he's sharing the frame with a star like Demi Moore? Director Rob Reiner should have either let these two check out each other's briefs or sacrificed a little box-office draw for an actress with a little gravitas.

But just as A Few Good Men so wrongheadedly argued, it's all about the career today, isn't it? It's all about not getting sidetracked. It's all about being... professional. In 1997's The Peacemaker, George Clooney and Nicole Kidman were not supposed to have sex because they were too busy saving the world from Bosnian extremists in possession of nuclear weapons. Never mind that sex and danger go together like prosciutto and melon. Never mind that Clooney is a bona fide sex symbol and Kidman has a streak of sensuality that could melt the bulletproof glass on the Pope-mobile. Never mind that Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner neck in the sand despite a civilization-ending nuclear cloud drifting their way in On the Beach. Never mind that in the face of a massive extraterrestrial conspiracy, Scully and Mulder at least tried to kiss in The X-Files. If the reason Kidman and Clooney weren't granted a little lip-omatic immunity in The Peacemaker is that this was supposed to be a mature film grounded in reality, then that's all the more reason these two should have exchanged genetic material. As an added benefit, a little sex might have distracted us from a story with enough plot holes to make any pretensions about realism laughable to begin with.

But all we get in The Peacemaker is a succession of faux Freudian metaphors that make Tom's baseball bat in A Few Good Men seem as loaded a symbol as Bill Clinton's cigar. At the beginning of the film, for example, we get the damp collar of Nicole Kidman's blouse. See, she was half-naked in the pool just moments before arriving at the Defense Department to show those good ole boys in their little sailor suits that she can place transatlantic phone calls with the best of them, wet hair be damned. Then, before they go to Bosnia, George and Nicole meet their contact in Vienna. "Is Kodoroff involved with Kordech? Is that why we're meeting in Vienna?" Kidman asks. Good question, and it's never resolved, because the only reason they're in Vienna is that Vienna is sexier than Bosnia, and that's important because Clooney and Kidman can't, as we know, actually have sex.

Clooney brings along some American music CDs for the contact's 16-year-old daughter, and in chit-chat (remember, they're keeping it real), the contact tells Clooney that the daughter is dating a 20-year-old guy into motocross. Why? Because sexual innuendo is better than no sex at all and Clooney and Kidman are having no sex at all. Why, in the middle of a grave multinational conflict taking place in a non-tropical climate, does Kidman suddenly start wearing a sleeveless blouse? Because Clooney and Kidman can't have sex. In the funniest scene dedicated to the precept that Clooney and Kidman can't have sex, Clooney, with Kidman at his side, uses a Mercedes to play demolition derby with the bad guys and completely trashes a town square. BOOM! He slams it in reverse, with a tight shot on that sexy wrist of his. BOOM! He jams it in drive, with a tight shot of Kidman, flung backwards into her seat. BOOM! He jams it in reverse--well, you get the picture.

Speaking of movies that involve sex that isn't sex, in City of Angels Nicolas Cage willfully and irrevocably surrenders his immortality for the rest of eternity to spend a day or so with Meg Ryan. Now, if I were an angel, you'd have to fork over Cameron Diaz wearing gravity boots and glow-in-the-dark lipstick before I'd hang up my halo. But this is one of those '90s films with emotional import and gentle laughter--meaning absolutely no one has a good time and nothing as abrasive as actual sex can intrude. Now, once again, the filmmakers have placated our need for sexual content. In fact, they've bent over backwards to create an eau de toilette sensuality, the kind perfected in TV commercials for Calvin Klein's Obsession.

When we meet Meg Ryan, who plays a surgeon burned out by the merciless entirety of death, she's reporting to the E.R. where her first major duty is to take off a few articles of clothing for us. A little later we get to see her bathing with candles, a long-neck bottle of beer and Paula Cole on the stereo. Nicolas Cage, one of many angels who roam the earth (and who, in this film anyway, look like the bad cowboys in a Sergio Leone Western) falls in love with Ryan from afar and follows her around, finally encountering her in a library where he reads her a passage from A Moveable Feast about eating oysters and experiencing "their strong taste of the sea." Devastating eroticism, huh?

"Oh, now, wait a minute," a friend of mine objected. "Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage have this big sex scene in front of the fire. What about that?"

Yeah, what about it? This is sex? Meg Ryan had more sex faking it in When Harry Met Sally.... Cage shows some life, but come on, already--here is a fallen angel, a guy who hasn't gotten any for the equivalent of 50 trillion consecutive life sentences. If he's gonna have sex, it damn well better be an orgasm that looks like the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. "Tell me what that feels like," Ryan says to Cage as they're making love. "Mmmm... warm and aching," he moans. Ditto for the flu.

Pages: 1 2 3 4