CENTER OF THE WORLD A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2001 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
Ah, fantasies! About to become filthy rich from his hot B-to-B IPO, which makes you wonder what the movie's sequel would be like, Richard (Peter Sarsgaard) hires drummer Florence (Molly Parker from KISSED) to spend a 3-day weekend with him in Vegas -- where else? Florence, whom he meets in a coffee shop, normally finances her music career as a lap-dancing stripper at a place aptly named "Pandora's Box." In CENTER OF THE WORLD, by director Wayne Wang (SMOKE), the action is hot but never quite hot enough.
Vociferously pointing out that she doesn't accept money for sex, Florence only agrees to take Richard's $10,000 stipend under strict conditions, "the rules" she calls them. Between the hours of 10 P.M. and 2 A.M., she will be available for his pleasure, but there will be no touching, no mouth kissing, no penetration and no talking about feelings. That these regulations will prove problematic for both is obvious from the start.
"It's all an act," Florence tells Richard soon after accepting his trip proposal. "You know that, right?" She needs her restrictions because they allow her to maintain her fantasy that she's just an actress. Richard goes along with them because he's so smitten by her that he'd agree to stand on his head if she asked him. Before Florence came into his life, he was a three-monitor kind of guy: one for stocks, one for video games and one for porn. With her, he has a real flesh-and-blood woman. Imagine that!
Although basically a two-person picture, an incredibly sexy Carla Gugino (the mom from SPY KIDS) shows up briefly to suggest the possibilities of a ménage à trois.
The movie has an ugly look almost as if they eschewed filming it on digital tape and purposely chose VHS instead. Maybe this was intentional, and Wang wanted to imitate the look of an old porn tape.
In a movie about sex that chooses to come in unrated, the surprise is that there isn't more, well, sex. For all its verbal and physical explicitness, it is in some ways quite prudish as it completely avoids full-frontal nudity when to show it would have been much more natural.
The movie's transparent message is that there's a difference between love and sex -- well, duh! Richard and Florence's first sexual encounter ends in laughter, hinting of a realism that never quite materializes. The movie ends up being one big tease. There are a lot of scenes that titillate, but, as soon as they are beginning to be successful, Wang cuts away to some pretentious small talk. Why can't movies follow through with their convictions?
CENTER OF THE WORLD runs 1:26. It is not rated but would be NC-17 for graphic sexuality, nudity and language. It would be acceptable for college students and older.
The film played as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival (<http://www.sfiff.org>) this year.
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