Sex & Consequences
Over the years filmmakers have experimented with the best formats in
which to present eroticism. As a general rule, they seem to have concluded
that steamy sex goes best with crime, and romantic sex goes best with
comedy. The writer of Sex and Consequences can at least be commended for
originality and "thinking outside the box," because this script is something
new entirely: the erotic tragedy. And I don't know about you, but nothing
turns me on more than mental anguish over the loss of a loved one!
Joan Severance, making a comeback to the erotica field at age 47 after
years of absence, plays a suburban housewife whose mental health is fragile
because of an incident in which her carelessness led to the death of her
daughter. She chooses as therapy the same thing that has worked for grannies
throughout recorded history: seducing a high school boy. The kid is content
to comply with her needs since (1) hey, she may be fiftyish, but she's still
Joan Severance and still looks great, especially her legs which are still
just about the best gams on the planet (2) she drops little hints that keep
him interested, subtle things like, "Take advantage of your time with me,
because I will do all sorts of things girls your age are just not ready
for." This immediately gets him running to the internet to look up the
proper procedures for such procedures as the Cleveland Steamer, the Dirty
Sanchez and, of course, the dreaded Rear Admiral.
As they spend more and more time together, Severance wants to take
greater and greater risks of discovery. She wants to make love with the boy
until her husband's car is in the driveway. She wants to take nude Polaroids
of the lad and leave them for her husband to see. The young man is
understandably terrified of this trend, since the husband is a hot-tempered
fellow who carries a gun in his work as a grizzled beat cop, and is already
being pushed to the edge by his wife's erratic behavior following the tragic
loss of their daughter.
As Austin Powers might say, "Am I making you horny?"
This lubricious erotic environment is made even tinglier by Joanie's
trips to the cemetery to place flowers on her daughter's tomb, and to have
long talks with the departed.
The "hook" of the film, if it can be called that, is the audience's
curiosity about why Severance is engaging in such provocative high-risk
behavior. It is clear that she is leading herself and her young beau into a
violent confrontation with the husband, and it seems apparent from the first
ten minutes of the film that her mental state has deteriorated far enough
that it can't be restored to health and must lead to tragedy. It isn't
exactly clear why she has chosen this particular young man, or what kind of
mad logic drives her to this sort of jeopardous behavior. We can see that
she is not really motivated by sexual lust, but we aren't really clear what
does motivate her.
SPOILERS
As it turns out, the boy is irrelevant. She chose him only because he
happened to be there, and she chose a vigorous young boy in general because
she felt it would be the one thing which would be most irritating to her
husband. Her apparent motivation is that she wants to die, but she doesn't
want to commit suicide so she can be reunited with her daughter in heaven,
so her only option is to provoke her husband into killing her. That's
exactly what happens, and it leads to one of the most bizarre endings I've
ever seen in a movie. The husband comes into a restaurant and blows her
away. Fade to black. Final scene: she and her daughter are together again,
chatting away and looking at a beautiful romantic sunset together. Is this
her final memory before she dies? Is this life after death? The movie
doesn't say. It just stops there and rolls the end credits over the sunset.
(The original title of the film was "The Last Sunset," and IMDb still lists
it under that name.)
End SPOILERS
The film seems to have been shot through a variety of very exaggerated
filters and with extreme saturation, darkness, and/or highly artificial
lighting. As a result, it looks less like live action than one of those
rotoscoped films like A Scanner Darkly, in which the actors have been turned
into cartoons with various photo imaging techniques. The erotic scenes not
only resemble cartoons, and dark cartoons at that, but they are edited in
such a way as to reveal only brief glimpses of Joan's flesh. I assume that
all of this was done to disguise the lines and sags of the leading lady, but
I'll be damned if I can see any reason for it. Severance looks about as good
as any woman can look at her age, and would have been plenty sexy even if
shot straight-on in natural light. Why not just let her play what she is and
show it accurately? In this day and age, a really hot fiftyish woman can
still be appealing, even with a few droopy and wrinkly bits her and there.
If I had to choose a genre, I'd call the film a melodrama with strong
sexual elements. It's not an erotic movie because the film's tragic premise,
dwelling as it does on death and madness, is enough to deflate your
erection, and the exaggerated photographic techniques may make your
testicles withdraw completely. It has a lusty moment here and there, but is
just not erotic enough to pass as a sexy B-movie. Since the caliber of the
writing and photography is not exactly Oscar caliber (Corbin Bernsen plays
the husband, if that gives you any indication), the film will have a
difficult time finding any audience at all, except for those of us who are
just die-hard Severance fans and are curious about her return to nudity
after nearly ten years. (Profile for Murder and In Dark Places, which showed
some Severance flesh, were released in 1996-1997, but even then she was
moving away from nudity - she used a body double for Black Scorpion way back
in 1995! Her great frontal scene in Red Shoe Diaries dates to around 1992.)
D+. You will not find it satisfactory whether you're seeking erotica or
drama. The only reason to watch it would be curiosity about Joan Severance.
We had film clips about a week ago (June 17th edition). I thought I would
be able to improve on them because they looked dark and funky, but as it
turns out they were excellent. It was the movie which was dark and funky.
The original snaps which I took that day from the film clips were just as
good as the captures I was able to make from the DVD, but this time I
gussied them up a bit.
