Full Body Massage

At the height of the pay cable softcore renaissance, Showtime went out and hired the director of one of the most memorable sex scenes in cinema history to craft a highbrow version of their usual smut.  The result was Full Body Massage (1995), a Nicolas Roeg joint that found the auteur responsible for Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie’s celebrated coital encounter in Don’t Look Now staging a cerebral mind-fuck between Mimi Rogers and Bryan Brown.  It’s one of the more inexplicable career moves for all involved…but not without its merits. 

Nina (Mimi Rogers) is a successful art dealer who likes to keep her life on schedule.  But things get out of whack when Fitch (Bryan Brown) shows up for her weekly massage rather than her usual boy toy.  A world-traveler with a philosophical bent, Fitch pushes Nina’s buttons while he kneads her muscles, resulting in lengthy conversations about marriage, professions and the meaning of life.

 

In an interview Rogers described the film as My Dinner with Andre with a massage table.  And that’s a pretty accurate assessment of the overly verbose script by Dan Gurskis, which covers just about every aspect of both character’s lives but manages to say next to nothing.  Roeg keeps us waiting for some big revelation, but, besides long, leisurely shots of Roger’s body (she looks terrific by the way at almost 40) covered in various oils, the film is curiously unengaging.

 

Roeg was never exactly a consistent filmmaker to begin with; his early work relied as much on the editing as the visuals to create a unique storytelling style.  And he attempts that here from time to time, jumping into flashbacks populated by second-tier actors who only distract from our two leads.  Rogers deserves a round of applause, not just for showing skin, but for performing so unselfconsciously.  While Bryan Brown could almost be playing a relative of his wise bartender from Cocktail after spending a few months at a Buddhist retreat.

 

Still, Full Body Massage is somehow fascinating the way it holds your attention.  It does so despite the pretentious dialogue and cut-rate production values.  And if the only explanation is a vicarious sense of horny relaxation watching two recognizable actors vainly attempting to elevate a genre that didn’t need their help to begin with…then so be it!

 

Premiering on Blu-ray as part of the classics line from Unearthed Films, the 2K scan of this uncut version looks very nice and includes a slightly shorter, slightly cropped TV version for comparison’s sake.  There’s also a stills gallery and trailer collection by way of extras.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tormented

Image
The west coast always struggled to create a creepy atmosphere on screen.  All that southern California sunshine just doesn’t lend itself to ghostly apparitions or gothic castles.  But  Tormented  (1960) gives it a good try, staging its opening scene in an abandoned lighthouse where blackmail turns into murder - and one cover up leads to another.  Director Bert I. Gordon, better known for his giant-sized - but low-budget - monster movies, works well at this level, turning in a film that delivers small scares but perhaps his most  professional finished product. Tom Stewart (played by genre regular Richard Carlson) is a fairly successful jazz pianist whose impending marriage to Meg Hubbard (Susan Gordon) will put him in an entirely new tax bracket.  Trouble is his old flame, Vi (Juli Reding), isn’t taking this lying down.  After  allowing  her to fall to her death in the opening scene, Tom is haunted by disembo...
Read more

All Ladies Do It / Frivolous Lola

Image
Every semi-professional review of erotica probably starts off with the same question:  what’s the difference between porn and art?  The internet age has essentially done away with foreplay; sex is merely the act of completion itself, minus the threat of any malware or suspicious browser activity.  But the work of Italian director Tinto Brass, for all its leering upskirt shots of derrieres and pubic hair, still communicates something that websites like Pornhub never will:  the art of seduction.  All Ladies Do It  (1992), a breezy sexual adventure, follows Diana (Claudia Koll) whose marriage is threatened by her fantasies of dalliances with other men, stories her husband believes are nothing more than exciting role play.  But her loose definition of adultery inspires plenty of promiscuous hook-ups, taking advantage of any (ahem)  loophole  that provides a quick thrill.   Flirting with some hardcore sequences (there...
Read more

The Cat and the Canary

Image
My favorite directors have always been showoffs:  Hitchcock, DePalma, Spielberg (when he’s feeling frisky) and gonzo auteurs like Sam Raimi.  There’s just something about their cinematic ambition, constantly reminding the audience that, yes, there actually  is  someone behind the camera calling the shots.  And that directorial discontent shines through even in the early days of the medium, such as Paul Leni’s 1927 adaptation of  The Cat and the Canary .  While the rest of the industry was still learning the basics of visual language, Leni fills his frame with tracking shots, POVs and dramatic lighting that set the standard for every spook show to come!  Gathered for the reading of the last will and testament of eccentric recluse Cyrus West,  the potential heirs meet up in his decrepit mansion to discover who will inherit the estate and family jewels.  Predictably there is some petty jealousy when young Annab...
Read more