1988 drama
Rating: 15/20
Plot: A surgeon has sex with a bunch of women in Czechoslovakia as Russians invade.
If I'm working on a best-of-1988 list, I can't pass up a movie that features Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche, can I? There are so many accents going on in this, but both give great performances. And so does Lena Olin, who I don't think I know. There's a physicality to the performances. A great early scene has Day-Lewis chasing Binoche through an old-folks home, and it's filmed really well but also features these performers who know exactly what to do with their bodies. And that continues throughout--from the quiet scenes where characters are reflecting on something to the numerous sex scenes.
Most of those sex scenes are wild endeavors, like director Philip Kaufman and the actors wanted to go at them like they were action sequences. The first time Day-Lewis and Binoche get together, for example, made me wonder how at least one of them didn't get seriously injured. They're erotic, but Kaufman isn't really filming them with the purpose of being erotic.
However, I have to say that there's a recurring bowler hat here that had a "Pavlov's dog" type of effect on me. An early scene has Lena Olin writhing and crawling over a mirror on the floor, and she's wearing the bowler. Later, the bowler was used in some sort of foreplay again, and eventually, I started to get aroused every time I saw that bowler. Nice trick there, Kaufman. Nice trick.
This is often a sprawling and difficult-to-follow story that feels a little pompous, but I did like some comedic bits thrown in. There's some fun visual humor with a lady and a dog in a car, and there's another moment with a fellow passenger on a train that was almost funny. There are also a pair of pigs that play a single pig, and their performances were really good.
The best scene has Day-Lewis staring down a cactus because if there's a scene in which Daniel Day-Lewis stares down a cactus in a movie, it's probably going to be the best scene.
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