{"id":5703,"date":"2013-12-27T16:16:56","date_gmt":"2013-12-27T08:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/?p=5703"},"modified":"2013-12-27T16:16:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-27T08:16:56","slug":"the-problem-with-sex-scenes-that-are-too-good-the-new-yorker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/2013\/12\/27\/the-problem-with-sex-scenes-that-are-too-good-the-new-yorker\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem with Sex Scenes That Are Too Good : The New Yorker"},"content":{"rendered":"

The film\u2019s two lead actresses, Ad\u00e8le Exarchopoulos and L\u00e9a Seydoux\u2014who were jointly awarded the Palme d\u2019Or at the Cannes Film Festival along with Kechiche\u2014spoke of the scenes, with Seydoux calling them \u201cvery embarrassing\u201d and Exarchopoulos saying as much in different terms. Exarchopoulos\u2014who plays the title character (the French title translates to \u201cThe Life of Ad\u00e8le, Chapters 1 and 2\u201d)\u2014later addressed the excessive attention paid to the twenty minutes of sex in the three-hour movie:
\nI understand it. American audiences aren\u2019t used to it. It\u2019s a choice by the director. We all have sex, it\u2019s like a drug, everyone loves it. We had to show how making love to someone is visceral. We had to convey how much of yourself you give over. So we chose to show to everyone the emotion behind the discovering of one\u2019s sexuality.
\nWe are adults, so come on. It\u2019s fiction, it\u2019s cinema. I don\u2019t get the big deal.
\nExarchopoulos\u2019s conflicted feelings get to the heart of the matter: sex is actually never not a big deal, whether in movies or in life. Sex is the joker in the deck, the infinite variable that provokes, on screen as in life, radically divergent and wildly unpredictable responses and consequences. But Kechiche brought trouble on himself\u2014not by the decision to film sex scenes between two women but by the audacity of his artistry in doing so. The problem with Kechiche\u2019s scenes is that they\u2019re too good\u2014too unusual, too challenging, too original\u2014to be assimilated (despite Dargis\u2019s protests to the contrary) to the familiar moviegoing experience. Their duration alone is exceptional, as is their emphasis on the physical struggle, the passionate and uninhibited athleticism of sex, the profound marking of the characters\u2019 souls by their sexual relationship.
\nMost sex scenes in movies are index-card signifiers, giving visual evidence of the fact that the characters have sex at a given point in the story but not actually showing much of significance about the sexual relationship. Thus\u2014to pick an example now on screens\u2014the banal sex scenes between the characters played by Vincent Lindon and Chiara Mastroianni in Claire Denis\u2019s \u201cBastards.\u201d Had Kechiche limited himself to quick scenes featuring the long-familiar pneumatic conventions of writhing and sighing, there would be little embarrassment and little debate. But, rather, he gave the sex scenes between Ad\u00e8le (Exarchopoulos) and Emma (Seydoux) a roiling power and an emotional weight that are central to the story. The scenes are rough, tender, funny, and harshly searching\u2014each of the characters gives thoroughly, exhaustingly of herself as she seeks, as if in severe and sincere questioning, what she can discover from the other.
\nvia The Problem with Sex Scenes That Are Too Good : The New Yorker<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The film\u2019s two lead actresses, Ad\u00e8le Exarchopoulos and L\u00e9a Seydoux\u2014who were jointly awarded the Palme d\u2019Or at the Cannes Film Festival along with Kechiche\u2014spoke of the scenes, with Seydoux calling them \u201cvery embarrassing\u201d and Exarchopoulos saying as much in different terms. Exarchopoulos\u2014who plays the title character (the French title translates to \u201cThe Life of Ad\u00e8le, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Problem with Sex Scenes That Are Too Good : The New Yorker”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reposts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}