Is there still a place for eroti­cism in cinema?

Since its incep­tion, cin­e­ma has been a pro­jec­tion of dreams, an exten­sion of the body and an agent of dis­rup­tion. At the heart of cinema’s appeal is its eroti­cism and at the heart of eroti­cism is trans­gres­sion. With the aim of keep­ing eroti­cism in cin­e­ma, Le Fes­ti­val du Film de Fess­es recent­ly screened a selec­tion of 11 short erot­ic films at the Phi Cen­tre in Mon­tréal. The ques­tion of eroti­cism in the mod­ern age seems increas­ing­ly frac­tured, more acces­si­ble than ever, but still stig­ma­tised on the big screen.

The late 1960s and ear­ly ​’70s was an excep­tion­al peri­od in which porno­graph­ic films gained main­stream pop­u­lar­i­ty. In the US, films like Deep Throat and Dev­il in Miss Jones attract­ed mas­sive audi­ences. Inter­na­tion­al­ly, movies like I Am Curi­ous (Yel­low), Emmanuelle and Deux Femmes en Or were also mak­ing waves. While the debate sur­round­ing the actu­al box office records of these films remains, even con­ser­v­a­tive­ly speak­ing, Deep Throat made at least $25 mil­lion in the­atres. What seemed impos­si­ble just 10 years ear­li­er, as inde­cen­cy laws dragged film­mak­ers like Russ Mey­er to court in the ear­ly ​’60s, briefly became a real­i­ty. Even today, the idea of even soft­core pornog­ra­phy screen­ing to mass audi­ences seems untenable. 

The ques­tion of what con­sti­tutes eroti­cism today becomes vital when look­ing at the col­lec­tion of shorts from the Le Fes­ti­val du Film de Fess­es pro­gramme. What counts as trans­gres­sive in the age of online pornog­ra­phy? What pass­es for erot­ic cin­e­ma in 2016? 

One of the big shifts in erot­ic con­scious­ness from the past to now lies in the tran­si­tion from cel­lu­loid to dig­i­tal. The French always referred to cel­lu­loid as ​‘pel­licule’, anoth­er word for skin. The idea of the hap­tic image, the idea of touch­ing with your eyes, has evolved from some­thing tac­tile to ethe­re­al. Among the film’s screened as part of the fes­ti­val, Peter Tscherkassky’s The Exquis­ite Cor­pus seems most pre­oc­cu­pied by this tran­si­tion, cre­at­ing a mon­tage dream of old porno­graph­ic and adver­tis­ing images. Told as a sto­ry of naked vil­lage peo­ple liv­ing by the ocean, an evo­ca­tion of FW Murnau’s Tabu: A Sto­ry of the South Seas, a young naked girl falls asleep on the beach and finds her dreams invad­ed by an onslaught of vibrat­ing and crack­ling images. Per­haps the most obvi­ous­ly tan­ta­lis­ing film of the group­ing as well, Tscherkassky draws on the tac­til­i­ty of film itself to inspire feel­ings of long­ing and desire. 

Films that are active­ly tan­ta­lis­ing, as with The Exquis­ite Cor­pus, present a unique expe­ri­ence in a the­atri­cal set­ting. See­ing a film before an audi­ence presents the oppor­tu­ni­ty for shared expe­ri­ences, one of the rea­sons why genre films like hor­ror and com­e­dy are as pop­u­lar as social expe­ri­ences as they are cin­e­mat­ic ones. Eroti­cism and sex present a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge as expe­ri­enc­ing arousal or desire in the cin­e­ma can be uncom­fort­able. It remains itself, a trans­gres­sive expe­ri­ence. Sex can and should be fun, but it’s hard not to admire films that forego com­e­dy for actu­al erot­ic arousal. Sex by way of com­e­dy gives the audi­ence a com­fort­able dis­tance from the mate­r­i­al, an out from engag­ing with the for­bid­den, and fac­ing any desire head-on. 

The Riv­er Under the Tongue, direct­ed by Car­men Jaquier, antic­i­pates eroti­cism with­out need­ing to depict sex. Set in a lush for­est, it fol­lows three gen­er­a­tions of women as they trav­el through the woods. A moth­er has read her daughter’s diary, to find a col­lec­tion of sex­u­al desires and expe­ri­ences. The film defies any famil­iar time peri­od, with no evi­dence of tech­nol­o­gy except cars. It’s a time­less sto­ry of grow­ing up and con­nect­ing with our hid­den selves. The diary entries that over­lap images of the for­est, both lived and imag­ined, cre­ate an aching pace of want­i­ng. The inti­mate ver­sion of your­self that emerges only through your desires edges at the periph­eries of those clos­est to you, your fam­i­ly. As the moth­er comes to terms with the unknowa­bil­i­ty of that part of her adult daughter’s life, she strug­gles even to con­nect to her pubes­cent daugh­ter who will soon fol­low down that same path of erot­ic awak­en­ing. The film feels time­less, an asset and a burden. 

Eroti­cism, not unlike hor­ror, is often of the moment because morals and habits change: col­lec­tive desire often reflect­ing deep­er impuls­es of the col­lec­tive than any­thing else. Dar­ing to present a film or a vision that feels unique to the now feels more dar­ing, and of the eleven films screened, only three films feel deeply and inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed to the contemporary. 

Notre héritage, by Jonathan Vinel and Car­o­line Pog­gi, explores the bur­geon­ing rela­tion­ship between two teens as the ado­les­cent boy comes to terms with his father’s work as a porn recruiter in Rus­sia. Using lo-fi dig­i­tal effects, the film evokes a kind of meme cul­ture where we become (or rage against) the porn we watch.The film’s style often works against deep­er insights, tak­ing on an atmos­phere of cold detach­ment and the affect­ed style of an edgy per­fume ad. It still has sub­ver­sive ele­ments, and the found footage style use of actu­al porno­graph­ic recruit­ment tapes are used poet­i­cal­ly, infus­ing them by way of con­text and voice over with long­ing, melan­choly, and empa­thy with­out exploit­ing exploita­tion for easy outrage. 

Sim­i­lar­ly work­ing with a kind of mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the image is Alex­is Lan­glois’ rau­cous and cel­e­bra­to­ry Fan­fre­luches et idées noires about a huge queer friend­ly par­ty in a tiny french apart­ment. Like a series of Klimt paint­ings come to life, the film feels like a cel­e­bra­tion of sex­u­al iden­ti­ty and the film works as an elab­o­rate tableau aes­thet­i­cal­ly and tonal­ly, evok­ing by way of diver­si­ty, a pri­mor­dial and spark­ly spec­ta­cle of a com­mu­ni­ty. Though over­long, the film still bounces with the now through its intu­itive use of music and a mer­ci­ful­ly brief emo­ji cat car­toon interlude. 

Of the short col­lec­tion, per­haps the most bewil­der­ing and chal­leng­ing is the exper­i­men­tal Panop­tik, direct­ed by Alexan­dre Rufin. A dis­turbing­ly real faux doc­u­men­tary about an ama­teur small-scale porn mag­nate in Que­bec, the film utilis­es entranc­ing tech­niques of obscur­ing the image through edit­ing and image manip­u­la­tion. Through the fil­ter of this recruiter, a brash, long-haired ego­ist with a high pitched gig­gle mas­querad­ing as a laugh, the film tack­les the blur­ring line between sex as inti­ma­cy and sex as per­for­mance. Play­ing on the word Panop­tic, mean­ing to see a total­i­ty or a whole of points of view all at once, the film presents con­tem­po­rary desire as frac­tured to the point of being divorced from the self. 

Sex in the film teas­es at pornog­ra­phy with­out ever reveal­ing much at all. The recruit­ment tapes, and much of the doc­u­men­tary footage feels painful­ly real. The lone­li­ness of the sub­jects and of the recruiter pal­pa­ble in their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and insa­tiable hunger. In the con­found­ing total­i­ty of the sex­u­al expe­ri­ence, the film feels tru­ly trans­gres­sive in its treat­ment of exploita­tive sex as some­how cathar­tic in its self-immo­la­tion. Through ges­ture and desire, the film chal­lenges the idea of sex­u­al lib­er­a­tion by way of per­son­al auton­o­my, depict­ing des­per­a­tion and lone­li­ness as a pow­er­ful and uncom­fort­able aphro­disi­ac. Exper­i­men­tal in style, Panop­tik blurs lines between the real and the imag­ined, chan­nel­ing poet­i­cal­ly the fil­ters of cen­sor­ship and delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion through the dis­tor­tion of images and identities.

Erot­ic cin­e­ma is not yet dead, coast­ing on our ever chang­ing stip­u­la­tions for healthy desire. Art-house films still chal­lenge audi­ences with images of sex and eroti­cism, while these ten­ants have all but dis­ap­peared from main­stream cin­e­mas except­ing the occa­sion­al myopic teen sex com­e­dy. The man­date of Le Fes­ti­val du Film de Fess­es still feels fresh and nec­es­sary, chal­leng­ing the lim­its of the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence, and encour­ag­ing an explo­ration of hid­den wants and desires.