Secret Things

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Film: C+

 

 

Jean-Claude Brisseau tries hard to pull off a film like Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) with his 2002 film Secret Things, but the film lands up falling closer to Tinto Brass’ Caligula (yes, the 1980 production from the in-decline Penthouse Magazine) when its Kubrick-wanna be sex scenes tend to lean towards Guccione’s excesses.  That is not to say this is as graphic a film.  Of anything, the way it holds back on how it shoots the sex gives away that this film is bound for disaster.

 

The film begins with it theme of voyeurism, as a nude young Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou) starts to masturbate as the also-sexy Nathalie (Coralie Revel) looks on.  As it turns out, in the style of the hilariously bad quasi-porno Café Flesh, often sold and peddled as a legitimate Science Fiction film.  Thus begins Brisseau’s failed attempt to marry hardcore sex films by doing them soft core with the legitimacy of Kubrick’s film.  Unfortunately, the Kubrick film went over the head of his head and he wrote this wacky story of one young lady helping another learn to masturbate and orgasm under all types of public circumstance.

 

Of course, this is not shot to look cheap and (no pun intended) handheld camera work is dropped from any scene in the film.  Eventually, the women discover each other, but there is more story than usual as they land up working at the same Paris banking institution.  They eventually hook up with the boss’ son (Fabrice Deville), who turns out to be a Caligula in his own time, and things get crazier when he suddenly marries Sandrine and his father dies.  What happens is eventually stupid and a wreck, though the parts that are shot nicely and the kind of failure the film is make it worth a look to see how not to deal with sexuality on the screen.

 

Part of the problem is that the sex is plastic, soulless and laughable, plus Brisseau simply has neither the skill nor the guts to honestly show the acts on screen.  Kubrick’s censored R-rated version of Eyes in sexier than this unrated cut of the film.  That this received so many good reviews, including from Cashier du Cinema, shows how bad film criticism has become.  That the film never caught on in the U.S., indie market, even with a great company like First Run to back it up, shows that U.S. audiences may not be a dumb as many first thought.  Now on DVD, you can judge for yourself.

 

In another touch, the film is shot here in the 1.33 x 1 frame, in an age of widescreen filmmaking.  This includes how the subtitles are placed, and though the print is clean, the presentation has definition limits.  Cinematographer Wilfrid Sempe offers nothing new or memorable image-wise, even if this film had been issued in the 1960s.  However, even a film print would not revel more sex or story than this disc.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has Pro Logic surrounds, while the film was a DTS Stereo exclusive, which explains why this is the best feature of the entire DVD, though a DTS mix would not have saved this film either.  Extras include a photo gallery, trailer for this and three better erotic-oriented DVDs from First Run, biographies and no explanation of what Brisseau thought he was doing here.  Yes, outside of his bad formula ripping-off, he is sometimes saying things only he knows the meaning of.  I would prefer not to know them after watching this.

 

Every time I read film critics write about sex on film, most of them sound like they have not had enough.  One giveaway is their comparisons to other films and site classic films as if they suddenly invented film theory, like when Steven Spielberg’s A.I. was issued in 2001.  They have simply been suckered by a picture that imitates better films and adds a sort of sex, in this case oddly self-censored.  The women seem mechanical, the men impotent and idiotic.  As for the ending of the film, there is one source I thought of that most film critics would not, probably because they do not have the guts and the original I have in mind did it better: the TV soap opera Dynasty.  Joan Collins has even done better, as has Radley Metzger.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo