THE WATERDANCE
[Spoilers]
A film review by Lon Ponschock
Copyright 1993 Lon Ponschock
Finally got to rent THE WATERDANCE starring Wesley Snipes and Eric Stoltz. I had read about this picture when it was in film release in the magazines. This information led me to believe that it would be the definitive film of the adult handicapped, but read on.
Written by Neal Jimenez, THE WATERDANCE is the story of a recently paralyzed writer who has received his injury from a mountain-climbing accident. We also meet several other men with spinal injuries which are as severe. (It just occurred to me that there are no women patients in this picture ... anywhere ... but read on.)
We see how, in their recovery, they have to learn to live with their disability on an emotional level. You see, there is the ability to appreciate a handicap on an intellectual level *when it is someone else's* like AIDS, for instance, but it is quite another matter to appreciate it on an emotional level *like when it's your own.*
Here's the news. Always-been handicapped individuals think about sex as often as you or I do (about every ten seconds). I say you and I, but *I* spent much of my youth as an invalid. Trust me, I'm right about this. Through such films as COMING HOME and BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, there have been attempts to portray what the sexual experience of an invalid would be like. But here's the big BUT: not in my recollection has there ever been an attempt to portray the always-been handicapped as sexual beings whether they are male or female.
Recently I read a book called ENABLING ROMANCE by Ken Kroll (Harmony Books, 1992, ill.) It's a THE JOY OF SEX written with much great humor and compassion for those who are disabled and those who care about them. It's available at your local library and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I also purchased it as a gift for a friend. The book not only talks about technique it also talks about what a person who is *not* disabled may bring to a relationship in which there is only one handicapped individual involved; *curiosity* being the most spiteful and hurting of all.
In THE WATERDANCE, the three principle characters have had full lives: success, women, action, and adventure (one of these is a biker dude, another is married, the third and principal man is a writer much like Neal Jimenez himself who actually suffered an accident similar to what happens in the film.) They cope with their disabilities and with their despair. Our biker dude is the first to be shown openly weeping. They are conducted through classes about what they can expect from sex in their new condition. They bond. They do *guy* stuff like going to a striptease house. The "you can look, but you can't touch" cliche as regards the handicapped is played out once again here. Our writer has a girlfriend who tries to stay with him and they share some intimacies. But these are marred by impersonal intrusions and physical incontinences, this last being particularly embarrassing. Finally our writer cuts her loose: she has a husband to go back to.
As I said earlier, many opportunities to tell the truth were missed in THE WATERDANCE. There is another better film to be made on the subject. But I recommend THE WATERDANCE as another insight into the lives of the handicapped . It attempts to define these men as Men in their diminished condition.
But there are other men and women who have lived this way all their lives. They have been treated as adult children who could not express passion or worse; have been *prevented* from expressing it.
Your comments on this are welcome in rec.arts.movies or as mail.
lon
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