From the comment section:
If you’re still faking Canadian identity, you should also grab the HD version of Sook-Yin Lee’s freshly waxed vagina in Toronto Stories that’s also available to rent.
She also just posted on Instagram a still image of her infamous last appearance on MuchMusic when she mooned the camera. She says the full clip will be in a new documentary about the CN Tower. A true Canadian treasure.
Sook-Yin Lee is a Toronto legend. I haven’t tracked down the HD version of Toronto Stories yet, but here is the 2008 scene he is talking about.
That was tame stuff compared to her performance in Shortbus (2006). This is not considered a porn film, but it ticks off a lot of the boxes
She looked like this in her first nude scene in The Art of Woo in 2001. (Originally with a blue filter, which you can see in the video below.)
My guess is that the real colors looked something like this:
And, for the sake of completeness, here is the (2001) mooning scene linked above:
Videos. (Shortbus is the only one I have with HD videos. I’ll look for Toronto Stories when I have a chance.)
My review of Shortbus follows the jump.
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For those of us who love screen nudity, the Holy Grail is a great movie with great nudity. It’s never really happened. There are been great movies with some nudity, and there has been great nudity in watchable films, but great/great is always been out of reach. The best we could hope for has been a pretty good movie with excellent nudity. Movies with spectacular nudity, like 9 Songs, are just never great movies, and the truly great movies like The Godfather never seem to have that much nudity at all. Why hasn’t our Grail been found? Well, a big part of the problem, maybe all of the problem, is that real-time sex simply screws up a movie’s pacing. Story-telling is all about forward progress and pacing, and a script writer has only about 90 minutes to grab our attention and spin his yarn. It is simply not possible to show several real-time sex scenes, taking several minutes each, in a worthwhile 90-minute drama. In terms of narrative, sex scenes are just long stretches when nothing happens. That is the problem with The Lover, for example, a magnificently photographed film – a genuine work of visual art – which has some damned good sex scenes. It’s only a great movie when the sex isn’t happening. And it only has great nudity in the boring part of the film. It has the core of great nudity and great filmmaking, but they never come together. I suppose the the two films which best integrate substantial nudity into the fabric of a pretty good film are Basic Instinct and Sirens.
Shortbus comes, very, very close to what we have been seeking. It is a wise and honest ensemble dramedy about modern relationships. I don’t even like that kind of movie in general, but I liked this one. The music is good. The jokes are good – I laughed out loud a couple of times. The drama works – I was emotionally invested in the story, and profoundly moved a few times. The characters, even the quirkiest ones, are human and believable, and I was rooting for them. The film is technically excellent, and marvelously inventive, with more than a touch of magic. The sex is explicit, and doesn’t go on too long to slow the story down. In fact, the sex scenes are all interesting to watch for some reason or another, because the characters are communicating in some way which is integral to the story or at least to maintaining a high level of energy and entertainment.
“So,” you are wondering, “why is the film only ‘close’ to our goal?”
I think Shortbus very well could have been our Holy Grail if the storylines had been split into two separate movies, one for the straight audience, one for the gay. It would have been a simple matter. There are basically two complete storylines.
On the one hand there is a woman who has never had an orgasm. This is particularly ironic, since she’s a sex therapist. Her euphemism for her condition is that she is “pre-orgasmic,” but nobody knows what the hell that means. One guy hears her use the term, then asks, “Does that mean you’re just about to have one?” and steps back to give her some additional room! Half of the movie is about her quest for the big O.
The other storyline is about a monogamous homosexual couple which has come to a crisis in the relationship because one of the partners is profoundly depressed. The two men look for answers – and their search includes a consultation with a relationship therapist – which circles back to the other story.
As it stands, the film is … er … polymorphous. Is that the word I’m looking for? The sexual activities take every shape possible. There are guys having daisy chains with other guys. There is masturbation by both sexes. There is heterosexual sex. There’s even a guy who can blow himself – and swallows! In all honesty, this is not what I want to watch. Homosexual sex doesn’t repulse me, but it doesn’t interest me either, so when the guys were getting it on, there wasn’t anything on screen that I was interested in. Let’s face it, I don’t have any interest in watching some naked guys lickin’ and suckin’ away and jackin’ each other’s beanstalks. Unfortunately for me, the male nudity is far more explicit and prolific than the female, so it’s actually more of a gay-oriented film. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it is actually an explicit gay movie with some hetero sex thrown in as a smokescreen.
So the film came close to ringing the carnival bell but ultimately won no cigar. Unless you’re gay.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Be that as it may, Shortbus is still a good movie, close to a great one. I think I can say I would have loved the film if all the relationships had been hetero and the sex scenes had all involved at least one woman. That’s the upside, and I’ve told you the downside, so I recommend the film for anyone who is not scared off by my description. I have a feeling that’s a pretty small audience, which is something of a shame, but a reality.
She also managed to get Cristin Miloti to do a nude scene when she directed her in The Year of The Carnivore. A legend, indeed.
Available to rent on Youtube and Google Play in HD in Canada. Much clearer than on the DVD.
Yes, Shortbus – although not a porn move per se – did feature extensive unsimulated sex.
I was vaguely disappointed in it, to be honest. I mean, I thought the concept of “let’s do a serious dramatic movie that has real sex in it” was a great concept, but the problem was, I felt, the project started with that, and worked out a story from there. Plus it felt like it couldn’t decide between being a real ensemble film and focusing on a single story, and as a result it finds more of a mushy middle ground of SEEMING like an ensemble but really only having two stories.
Shortbus has some flaws and limitations as a movie, but I thought that it was at least an interesting attempt in terms of combining legitimate movie storytelling with unsimulated erotic content. And the sex in it was central to the plot itself. There are not all that many films that have done that, and most that have are limited release European arthouse flicks featuring actors you have never heard of. And even then, there is a lot of cheating that goes on with the use of body doubles and/or prostheses. Shortbus did not skimp out in that regard. The central character was played by Ms. Lee who was very well known (in Canada, at least – she was the host of a popular radio show on the national broadcaster at that time). And the sex, including Ms. Lee’s sex scenes, was very much real.
It would be an interesting retrospective for this site to consider ‘legitimate’ film releases that feature unsimulated sex. In terms of major studio releases, I am assuming that the count is very few. Of course, there are some major studio films that have been subject to unconfirmed rumours that the actors actually had sex while they were being filmed (for example, Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in ‘Don’t Look Now’ – very likely not true in that case). Where there have been feature films that included real sex they usually have been made by small independent studios.
Oh, it’s absolutely an interesting attempt, no doubt, and there are a number of bits I really like– the character who runs the Shortbus club has a really great monologue, for example. But it definitely feels like things weren’t fully baked, as it were. And they may have been limited in the zone of “folks who are willing to have real sex on camera” and “folks who can act well enough to carry a plot line”. But absolutely a worthy experiment of cinema.
I think that Shortbus is a fine film, but as I noted in my review, it is basically a gay film with some hetero sex tossed in as a smokescreen.
“it is basically a gay film with some hetero sex tossed in as a smokescreen.”
I mean, I think that is part of why I wanted it to be more ensemble plots than we got. We basically got A Gay Plot and A Straight Plot– or even more correctly, A Gay Men Plot and a Lady Plot– and then a little bit of Severin who is just sort of on the edge of the orbit– and I think more different stories to focus on would have helped a lot. I agree with you, it feels like the gay couple was the story that interested Mitchell the most, but he knew he needed to have some straightness in there to not just make it a Gay Movie. And also, I tihnk it is fine, but could have been something more. Or, at least, I felt I was promised something more than was actually delivered.
What even is this movie lol.
Imagine getting gussied up to go down to the old independent theater with the high society crowd to watch some dude come in his own mouth. “Art!”
She also directed a good recent film, Paying for It.
Wow, had no idea she was a veejay, this would be like if my 80s crush Martha Quinn mooned MTV on her last day then did art porn movies (altho didn’t Nina Blackwood shoot some nudes?)
I read your Shortbus review Scoop (link posted above) and it made me think. I have always been intrigued about having more mainstream movies that would combine real storytelling with explicit, honest sex scenes. A few mainstream movies have tried, although not many. (And some porn movies have tried from the other direction – to add at least an ‘attempt’ at real storytelling and good acting to what otherwise is a sex film.) Your review identified a reason that I had not thought of before that such a combination may inherently not work all that well. Real storytelling in a movie almost always means scenes that are constantly driving the narrative forward. Meanwhile, sex scenes in movies – even extremely well-filmed sex scenes – don’t tend to do that. They may be perfectly pleasant and stimulating in their own right, but they are generally not moving the story forward while they are on screen, and especially not so if they are of any extended length. Filmed explicit sex generally has a different purpose than storytelling in films. The purpose of stimulation is a legitimate one and is a worthwhile achievement if done well – although, unfortunately, the vast majority of porn does it poorly (in my view, anyways). But ultimately it is a different purpose and it may be inherently difficult to mix the two film types.
Maybe the best you can do is something like Shortbus, where the sex scenes are not very long and are mostly all directly integrated into the storyline. That said, I wonder if it still possible to do it better than it mostly has been done to date. I can think of two Asian films that apparently do stand up to scrutiny in this regard: In the Realm of the Senses (1976) and Lust, Caution (2007). I have not actually seen either of these, however. I should add them to my ‘to view’ list.
These sound like the same reason most films do not have honest, explicit scenes of people eating a meal. Or people going from point A to point B, when the journey is not the point of the film. Many people complained about the long driving scenes in “The Beast of Yucca Flats” and “Birdemic”, for instance.
Sleeping while alone is perhaps another example. The only film I can think of that covered that honestly and explicitly was Andy Warhol’s “Sleep”, and I believe that was poorly received at the box office. I could not find Scoop’s review of it, though.
I would have reviewed it, but I fell asleep.
If you remember The Brown Bunny, it was a classic example of driving, driving, driving … close-up of rain on the windshield … close-up of windshield wipers … more driving. Not even a series of Burma Shave signs to liven things up.
“honest, explicit scenes of people eating a meal” – Babette’s Feast, My Dinner With Andre – two action-packed thrillers if ever there was one.
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On a semi-serious note:
I occasionally watch classic TV shows from my youth, and I’m always shocked by how slow the pacing is. The old Burns and Allen shows can be funny, especially when George is roasting the announcer (Harry Von Zell), but so much of the running time is used up by people walking from one place to another when, as you noted, walking is not the point of the scene. It’s like everybody in the 50s thought TV shows had to be shot in a single tracking shot.
Ironically, of course, beyond the driving in the The Brown Bunny was another attempt to marry explicit sex with a real film (albeit there is an argument that The Brown Bunny was not truly legitimate cinema, although I guess that some people liked it).