SIRENS
A film review by John M. Bozeman
Copyright 1994 John M. Bozeman
CAPSULE REVIEW: A minister and his wife head into the nether
regions of Australia to try to tone down the scandalous
content of an artist's pictures. Set in the first quarter of
the twentieth century and laden with artistic pretensions,
this flawed film does contain a few redeeming qualities.
The movie reviewer for the Charlottesville regional arts newspaper hates most new movies, so when he called SIRENS a "cheesy bit of soft core porn [that] masquerades as a meditation of repression and sexual liberation," I thought that he was exaggerating. Unfortunately, he was not. Not since the unfortunate film adaptation of LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER (starring Sylvia Crystal) have I seen such a slick, high-budget, and clumsy attempt at dealing with sexuality on the silver screen.
The basic story goes as follows: an Australian painter (played by Sam Neill) is creating a stir as a result of his voluptuous paintings of classical subjects. The Church dispatches an English minister (Hugh Grant), accompanied by his wife (Tara Fitzgerald) to try to persuade him to tone down the brazen nudity found in the artwork. In the face of cavorting, flirtatious, unbelievably beautiful models, the minister remains affable but resolute in his quest--but wait! His wife, against her will, comes to appreciate the earthy passion on display here, eventually sharing a night of ecstasy with the seemingly handicapped (supposedly almost blind and perhaps mute) handyman with the body of Adonis. We also see the prejudice and hypocrisy of the nearby townspeople, who shun the artist and his models while clandestinely longing to engage in the very acts that he portrays in his work.
When it comes to symbolism, this film surely puts the "b" back in "subtle." Like THE FISHER KING, SIRENS is laden with pretentious symbolism that hits one in the face again and again; one can almost hear the film's creators patting themselves on the back over their own cleverness. On the one hand we have the minister, representing dry, intellectual, passionless, asexual, conventional, dull traditional reason; on the other we have joy, passion, intensity, sexuality, and artistic spontaneity represented by the artist and his crew of mischievous vixens. I suppose that the minister's wife is supposed to represent us, the audience, who for a while partakes of the sublime essence of raw art, but who in the end goes back--though leavened a bit, and even perking up her rather bookish husband.
In spite of these limitations (along with a few sex scenes so pretentious as to be embarrassing), this movie does have some redeeming qualities--but probably not the ones that the film's creators intended. Far more than the silly, prevalent ideology of sexual liberation, the most impressive aspect of the film was the occasional humanity that creeps in: the frustration of the models with their being shunned by the townsfolk; the superficially silly, but in actuality profound devotion of the minister for his wife, despite his knowledge of her participation in activities with lesbian sexual overtones; the minister's liking and apparently honest concern for one of the younger models.
Indeed, I suppose I am a bit of a conservative, but I found the minister to be the most enviable person of the bunch, and for this I commend the producers. Rather than being portrayed as a stodgy, doctrinaire fuddy-duddy, he is intelligent, well-read, honest, generally faithful, and (within his context) tolerant of the narcissistic, hedonistic silliness going on around him. Both he and his wife retain an honest ability to care for others, in the face heady passions with strong undercurrents of insincerity bordering, in some cases, on duplicity.
Overall grade: C+ (OK for a half-price matinee)
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews