Men (1997)

A sort of precursor to 'Sex and the City, 'Men' follows a woman with, apparently, a man's attitude towards sexual experimentation and promiscuity. Moving from New York to Los Angeles, she allies typical traits of both sexes by cooking and fucking on a wide spectrum, until finding brief happiness. The film is inevitably poor, with a vague philosophy concerning women's sexuality in a film that feels designed to titillate male fantasies. It is cheap with weak performances and a plot that swerves from procrastination to extreme action with no depth - the title itself is misleading, unless you read the focus as really being a woman's obsession with men, rather than her freedom from them.

Sean Young stars as Stella, who begins the film with a very peculiar relationship with her best friend, a suicidal alcoholic male with whom she lives, sleeps and even shares a bath. There relationship is curious as it is presented to us as asexual, presumably to demonstrate that men and women can have intimate friendship without the need for more, but there is definite sexual tension between them and I feel that if it wasn't for the alcoholic stupor and depression that prevents Teo from being sexually aroused, there would undoubtedly be a physical relationship between them. Her other experiences with men cover various races, ages and personalities, with the one constant of all the men being fairly unattractive - seeming to fulfill a male fantasy of a sexually available woman, rather than providing a successful, liberal rolemodel for women.

Vaguely, Stella is pushed away by Teo with the aim of saving her from his self-destructive impulses, sending her to Los Angeles and a new opportunity for sexual and culinary expression. She moves in with a repressed housemate, allowing her to extol on her theories that women inhabit male fantasies they've learnt from films, rather than exploring sex for themselves. She then forms an attachment with the older owner of the restaurant where she finds work, before falling for the younger photographer she encounters one night. This sets her on a slippery slope, first rejecting the offer of settling down with one man, before feeling the need to do so with the other. At the film's climax, she meets the photographer's lesbian friends, and ultimately repulsed by these totally liberated and promiscuous women, she discovers her need for monogamy with her photographer.

The film is poorly directed, however, and any serious message gleaned from her experiences is undermined by sentimentality and overt drama, as well as a sloppy disregard for legitimacy. The white, bohemian photographer is apparently able to invade the private spaces of black gang members without them seeming to pay him any attention, in order to take his pictures. Simultaneously, Stella/Sean Young shows no real skill in the cooking scenes, haphazardly throwing ingredients into a frying pan before chucking them on a plate without any thought for design. Immediately, both characters are rendered unbelievable. Our experience of their growing intimacy is also rather trite, with scenes of sex and cooking and little more, with the exception of one of the most horrific scenes I have ever witnessed in a serious film. The two lovers are seated at either end of a see-saw, instantly suggestive of an immature lust rather than a sincere love. They move up and down with big smiles upon their faces, in slow-motion, as the rest of the world fades away. Not only is the scene drenched in sentimental, romantic idealism, but it's also a huge copout from portraying a believable development in a realistic relationship. What makes it worse is that this scene is referred to later in the film as the defining moment of their love.

For me that scene is typical of a film that believes it's saying a lot more than it is really capable of, with the inclusion of an irritatingly superficial voiceover. One interesting point is that the film was co-written by Karen Black, of 'Five Easy Pieces' (reviewed in January), but the only reason I can think of for watching this film is the sex, which I'm inclined to believe is the only reason it ever got funding.