esrosedotblog

TODAY'S MOVIE

BODY HEAT (1981): NYTimes1176Best; Lawrence Kasdan's film noir (written and directed) in color with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner as well as pre-CHEERS Ted Danson and Richard Krenna; also the young Mickey Rourke!

This is a beautifully realized picture. We just watched Kasdan's BIG CHILL and the attention to detail and quality of the work is the same, albeit in an entirely different milieu. I guess that is the right word. Genré? He means this to be a film noir exercise and as Roger Ebert pointed out about this picture, it is hard to do a thing like this well, consciously. Most of the film noir guys didn't know that they were doing it at the time and so the creative elements are more integral and somehow more innocent--a strange word to use with noir but there it is. Kasdan comes to it as a fan and puts a lot of the markers in his film. But, he does this unobtrusively and very well indeed.

That said, the film is a great double-cross or triple-cross story. It is a cliffhanger and keeps drawing the viewer out in the same way that Turner leads Hurt on; only in his case, she is leading him by his dick.

It was Turner's first picture and Hurt's second. Their chemistry is incredible; perhaps the sexiest scenes I have seen, on a par with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in DON'T LOOK BACK. Notable because there is as much male as female skin and Turner has her hand in his pants much of the time; she is the aggressor and leader, really. There is no faking it and yet it is not X. Just hot and prurient; great foreplay. You rarely see this. Male actors and directors hide themselves all the time and let the gals strut themselves (unless the picture has Harvey Keitel who is more than happy to go full frontal at any time). Perhaps it is where Mickey Rourke (9 1/2 WEEKS) got started in his quest to be uber-stud later on. The sex is not the point of the picture but it is a point which makes the watching of it very special. When a homo can get warm watching het-sex then you know there is something cooking.

Incidentally, I think that the Danson character is meant to be queer and to have a thing about Hurt. It is not put forth very aggressively but if you want to find it, the clues are there. I did not want to find it but I am more 'sensitive' than most. It is not important to plot or characters. It is a very light backstory kind of thing. What else? It is hard to believe that this is the same Kasdan who wrote RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and two of the STARWARS pictures. Not that there is anything wrong with that but it is very interesting and shows the range he brings to the work.

William Hurt is a fascinating actor. Kasdan used him again in BIG CHILL and ACCIDENTAL TOURIST. I love watching him. He has a lot of charm and is very handsome indeed. He seems to inhabit the roles that he is in and yet make them indelibly his own. I like his patented little quirks; accents; riffs. And so on. We will be watching him again in some other BestFilms. I am giving this one a 4 out of Netflix5.