The Loss of Sexual Innocence (1999)

Director Mike Figgis, creator of the Academy award-winning Leaving Las Vegas, presented this film's world premiere at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. The story is made up of non-linear, interconnected episodes about a man at different stages of his life, all of which explicate thematically the film's title. The film also juxtaposes a retelling of the classic biblical fall-from-grace tale of Adam and Eve. We see the leading character, Nic, at 5 years old as a boy in colonial Kenya, at age 16 in swinging London in the '60s, and as a grown man working as a film ethnographer. Each sequence shows how he lost some degree of his sexual innocence, whether it be through love, puberty, or masturbation. Shot all over the world, including Tunisia, Italy, and England, the film is an exploration of sex and loss through the life of one individual.