Newspaper Article

Sitting-room sleaze Just for the record, that was Britpop

Walker, Alexander

2003

Overview

Casualties of Seventies \"liberation\", [Rob Crane] and [John Carpenter] (played here by Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe) serve the same purpose as earlier [PAUL Schrader] films, like Hardcore (flesh flicks) and American Gigolo (male prostitution): they exemplify the pervasively sensate US society and the corruption that sexual-commerce inflicts on individuals who binge on it. Schrader's films have an Old Testament ring, a Mosaic comeuppance. Temptation and sin are Auto Focus's, er, focus. At home, Crane is already into girly mags and nudie pinups. Enter Carpenter, who puts the action into the sex by demonstrating Sony's new camcorders and taking him to strip clubs for a trial recording. Soon, sex-play leads to video replay upon replay. Lacking work when Hogan's Heroes' run ends, Crane gets hooked on home-made porn by his slimeball friend. Each advance in video technology pushes the men to lower depths of prurient experiment. \"Sex isn't an answer,\" Crane is warned, and quips lubriciously: \"No, it's a question.\" A few weeks later, though, when taking him the dinner (in a Tupperware box, naturally) he is too busy at the office to come home for, [Cathy] finds her husband doing something men don't do - in another guy's arms. [Todd Haynes] plants the stigma of homosexuality in this perfect household-with finesse: just enough angst to upset the balance of domestic bliss, but also enough fidelity from Cathy to bear up. The analyst whom [Frank] consults, with Cathy understandably left in the anteroom, is a voice from the past when gay rights hadn't even a name, never mind a movement, and shock therapy was supposed to restore \"hormonal balance\". But the damage has been done.

• Publisher: Evening Standard Limited
• Subject: Carpenter, John Henry / Crane, Rob / Fiennes, Ralph / Haynes, Todd / Schrader, Paul