I really don't like giving this film a numerical rating. It strikes me as an experiment that has and will cause some viewers to think things that Figgis might not be happy to hear about. His film "Liebestraum" is one of my favorites, but he might find my interpretations of that one quite odd. So what I have here are a list of ideas which I think are suggested by parts of the film. As one reviewer here said, this is not a film about sex. The sex and the title are there to drag people in and to keep some of them watching. Parts of the film are certainly straightforward enough as in the case of little Figgis being treated horribly in a modern 'civilized' school gymnasium setting. The description of primitive people and how they trained (or still train..) their children to be killers and cannibals when it comes to members of other tribes that comes before the school sequence certainly tells you what's going on. Civilization hasn't come very far. However, apologists for both the cannibal tribe and the 'war on obesity'might have to think the 'apologies' over. (unless they are hopeless) When it comes to animals..the human one is one of the really low ones, especially when it's part of a group or a tribe. Of course the scenes with the characters most reviewers call Adam and Eve do in the end suggest South Africa during the apartheid period. The police and guns and dogs. The twins..are an easy part. However, not all twins are happy to be twins. (And certain cultures view twins in very vicious tribal ways..) The sequence in the desert could give a viewer something to think about when someone comes around asking for donations for starving desert tribes who wear turbans and paint themselves blue. The tribe kills the woman, one of the twins,because she offered to stay behind while the others involved in the 'accident' drove to notify the police. A child who should not have been running alone in the desert was killed by the reckless driving of a western man incapable of much thought. He's no better than the jerks who laugh at the incident involving the blind woman's seeing eye dog earlier in the film. There too the twin tries to help and is hit at by the blind woman trying to fend off the dogs in heat and maybe their counterparts. The twin is innocent but the members of the tribe think in numbers. They are incapable of any of the nuances human beings should after all this time be capable of. The reckless driver gets off free and is happy to leave the woman behind. Her boyfriend is a little upset. Of course we don't know who played the tribe in the desert... It's a nicely cynical piece of work. Sex is the least interesting thing in the movie. (This is from june of 'joejune'.)

Well, I have to say that the comments on this movie are everywhere from "I'd give this a 0/10 if I could" to "10/10 masterpiece". Yes, this movie is all over the place. Confessed, I expected it to be that way when I decided to watch it. I would bear a non linear movie, and rather demented symbolism, if the theme is something that appeals to me, or better still - FITS the form of the movie. Sadly this did not. It's just art-cinema's answer to the hype around sex for pleasure nowadays. In a good movie, (just as with a good book) the theme should dominate the form. Sadly, the form was having epileptic fits here while the theme just sat there being generic and straightforward. This is rather like telling a story and structuring it like a poem. Why try to make the story of a (rather uninteresting, however handsome) man's sexual life up to his mid 40's subject to an artsy attack? The story (or the little that there IS) behind it is not deep, and not particularly meaningful, but the form (the way it's shot / the random scenes and flashbacks) didn't really help it to more seriosity and were hence, rather laughable. Triviality cloaked in 'artistry' really isn't down my street. If the theme would have been something very meaningful or complex or tragic, the form might have worked a little better (Why not give it an American Gothic touch, rather like McGrath or Brockden Brown in film version?) It would have raised the seriosity of the movie (and believe me... this movie is taking itself very seriously).I just cannot love a movie with such a trivial and generic theme (sex for pleasure) because it isn't really new or, as I said before, all too meaningful or deep in itself. Goes to show that you need a story that actually deserves to be wrapped in the cloak of stilted artistry.In its credit however, I will say that some of the camera work was stunning, and some visuals were quite breathtaking. I can't say I relate to the characters, but then with an artsy movie it's really hit or miss if you'll relate to them, since they must appeal to you personally to start off with, since they don't usually say much in their favor throughout the movie.Last but not least I'd like to say that even though I didn't particularly enjoy this movie doesn't mean that I don't enjoy art house movies. It's funny how people say "if you didn't like this you can go watch some generic love comedy in the cinema"... there's something in between too, you know! This isn't "either ultra-artsy or generic to an extreme degree" - there's some very good art-house flicks that realize that being alternative doesn't mean having to resort to obscure camera angles and a scattered plot.

I found this film much by accident, however the sexual interaction througout this film was quite intriguing. Hanne Klintoe is a looker with a very fine body. Interesting to see Ms. Macdonald, who also appeared in "Elizabeth" and "Trainspotting". And by the way, in "GosfordPark". Apparently Ms. Klintoe has not appeared in any other film, or at least, has no record of filmography. Wish I knew if she is in any other film. Incidentally, Saffron Burrows, who is murdered in this film also appears in the very fine film entitled "Enigma". A spy story about encoding messages during the 2nd world war. Enigma, like this film has many twists and turns to the plot and also enjoys some of the finest British actors of record. I enjoyed this film and posses a copy of the same.

Mike Figgis' "Loss of Sexual innocence" is another of his undertakings into the world of film art. It's not quite art, and it's not quite entertaining. The film is expressed in a series of vignettes concerning the sexual maturity of a character called Nic intertwined with other bits that are supposed to represent Adam and Eve and the beginnings of sexual discovery and other bits that either mean something or not. The problem, though, is that the bits don't really add up to anything, not schematically, not thematically. Every time the Nic character reappears at a different age, you don't even get a sense of it being the same person; it always feels like Figgis is starting from scratch all over again with a new set of players. Figgis is a talented filmmaker, though. He knows how to build a segment for dramatic impact and how to compose a shot for effect, and in those rare moments, it feels like it's not all worthless and Figgis is getting across to the audience on some level. The sketch of Nic and his family stopping at a roadside gas station is a good piece, as is the woman in the see-through cotton dress at the train stop. There is an implied sexuality there, the sexuality that hums all around us, that we experience without really feeling. That's when the movie scores, when it's not just another lame coming-of-age story. But those moments are all too few. On the other hand, the Adam and Eve bits are trite, and one scene where a man carries a shopping bag with a liquor bottle spout protruding (obviously a metaphor for the male penis) is kid stuff, junkyard symbolism at its worst. Where this movie fails is not is in its structure on the screen, but in the mind. One postscript: After watching it, I put on the director's commentary on the DVD to get maybe a better understanding of what he was trying to do. Figgis narrates with a not-exactly-arrogance but with a tone certainly descending from the mountain. When he spoke the words "we trucked in a load of red clay to recreate the Kenya of my youth", I knew I was done for. I turned it off and switched back to my Sunday Sports Center. 1 1/2 * out of 4