THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE (Sony Classics) Starring: Julian Sands, Saffron Burrows, Stefano Dionisi, Kelly Macdonald, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Hanne Klintoe, Femi Ogumbanjo. Screenplay: Mike Figgis. Producers: Mike Figgis and Annie Stewart. Director: Mike Figgis. MPAA Rating: R (nudity, sexual situations, violence, adult themes) Running Time: 101 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Is THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE, Mike Figgis' experimental non-linear tone poem, pretentious? Of course it is -- you've got to have a healthy streak of pretentiousness in you to break free from conventional narrative structure and make something so distinct that it's occasionally confounding. Perhaps a better question is whether THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE is nothing _but_ pretentious. Even more so than in most films, the answer to that question will be an eye-of-the-beholder proposition. Some will see little more than insufferable, gratuitous, iconoclastic noodling. Others will see a film that grips you with many of its images even as it keeps you at an artistic arm's length.
Though there is no structured "story" to THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE, there is a focal point in the character of Nic, seen at various formative stages of his life. As an adolescent (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), he has his first fumbling sexual experiences; as an adult (Julian Sands), he struggles with a marriage to a wife (Kelly Macdonald) as full of doubts as he is. Much of the film deals with Nic's work as an ethnographic film-maker, working with a crew in a remote African location, while another sub-plot spins us off into the world of twins (Saffron Burrows) separated at birth. And serving as a bridge between all these episodes is an impressionistic rendering of the Eden story, following the experiences of Adam (Femi Ogumbanjo) and Eve (Hanne Klintoe).
What may appear from that description to be a fragmented film actually feels surprisingly cohesive. Figgis maintains a consistent tone for his various images, creating a collection of cinematic short stories as thematically connected as Hemingway's _A Moveable Feast_. The piano music of Schumann and Chopin trades places with Figgis' own compositions, accentuating some magical cinematography by Benoit Delhomme. If you allow yourself to get lost in THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE, and avoid succumbing to the temptation to figure out what everything "means," it can wash over your resistance to its unconventionality. Some of the individual stories, like a chance meeting between the twins, pack an emotional wallop; some of the individual visions, like a golden landscape that dissolves into the ripples of a water reflection, are breathtakingly unforgettable.
And, to be frank, some of it is just plain weird. In one sequence, we are shown the dreams of Nic and his wife. Instead of giving us a view of an inner life, the scenes play out like a parody of dream images, full of dissonant music and shifting realities like a years-too-late outtake from "Twin Peaks." Most baffling and annoying to some will be the Garden of Eden sequences, which conspicuously match a transluscently Nordic Eve with a strikingly black Adam, both of whom are fully nude in every scene. There's nothing particularly revelatory about Figgis' account of the Fall but his interracial First Parents, nothing visually compelling in his unblinking staredown with innocence personified. By the time the tale closes with an absurd vision of paparazzi chasing the now-fallen pair outside the gates of Paradise, it all starts to look more like a Calvin Klein ad than a cinematic experiment.
That's the level on which THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE is bound to set to itching those who can't stand it when their art looks this in-your-face art-y. There are times when Figgis' efforts grow wearying in their lack of basic resonance with the viewer's experiences. There are also times when he hits the nail spectacularly on the head, and times when the film works on an almost symphonic level. Mike Figgis wants to use the cinema the way only cinema can be used, and without question he does so. The extent to which this mixed bag of mourning and memory succeeds is a matter for _extremely_ subjective analysis.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Paradise losses: 6.
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