atom egoyan is one of the best neo-noir directors, along with david lynch, brian de palma, paul verhoren and quentin tarantino since the 90s. i hate to say this but chloe is the first movie of his i saw, then this one. i've been continuously amazed at his stylish perspective to render man's obsession about the
womankind in general. there're several formuli on noir: set in the seedy scenes of metropolitans like los angeles, hollywood or new york, and a detective or journalist with urgent pursuit of truth (in other words, an anguish desire to decode the myth behind the veil, such as solving a murder), and the the most ravishing of all: the voyeuristic projection of dramatized sex and twisted love (or another term would be romance without love)...there's also a term called metaphysical detective novel, which was initiated by borges, umberto eco way back in the 80s. in order to create a feeling of de-familiarization, the writers have to complicate the story into a labyrinthine myth, which deludes, misguides then leads you into the astray path while distracted by vast amount of gore and intensified sex. but the ending always results in a dystopic dissolution of its motif. its purpose is demystification through extreme mystisfactions.
the plots of "where the truth lies" is literally process of seeking the real cause of death of an unknown young woman who dies in the royal suite of two hollywood superstars in 1950s. egoyan explores a lot upon the mentality of sex, for example, in one scene, kevin bacon's character narrates that he prefers the missionary position just to detect what his sex-mate is really thinking during it, but the woman stares fiercely back at him as if his soul becomes suddenly transparent. it has one of those explicitly titilating discussion on sex by creating great many interesting ways to fetishize and deitify woman in a not so depthless manner. no matter how creative their perspectives (or POV, more professionally speaking) could be, it's still phallocentric, and noir is an inevitably phallocentric genre. but in a phallocentric genre as this, directors like egoyan or lynch always invent the most imaginatively provocative form of homoerotic love scenes (lesbiano-erotic, correctly speaking) to render man's endless fascination and obsessive curisiosity for female sexuality.
remember david lynch's muholland drive? the scene naomi watts kisses laura harring....if you saw this, you would get a clue about what i just said.
as for this one, it's alice in the wonderland with a naughty twist. the pornographical version of alice in wonderland, mingled with strong insinuation of cunnilingus(am i explict enough here), accelerated through hallucinationary acid. and this is created by A MAN, who is better than any female directors at composing a female homoerotic scene!!! i have to say, whether it's chloe or where the truth lies, either one of these two egoyan's movies (with a lesbian twist) is far sexier and more entincing than "if the wall could walk 1 or 2" or even "high art" or "the kids are all right"...because the women are objectively evolved into the niche of misty mirage, and the man, the viewer would spend great efforts to grasp a piece of her ike groping an object blind-foldedly within a milky fog! and you cannot say it's deragatory, somehow it's quite compimentary to woman despite its relentless fetishization, with a sense of masochistic romanticism contradicted with a misogynistic resistance.
btw, chloe is really great, and seriously under-rated. (if you wanna avoid this one for some silly misjudgement you hear from others, you would be missing one of the sexiest and most arousing love scenes..the loss is yours, not miine. hehe)
August 30, 2010
Top Critic
