Understanding intricacies of sex
Film Appreciation with K S
Sivakumaran
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Alejandra
Szeplaki |
Some of the films I had seen at the International Film Festivals in
India had been on sex themes. They were educative for me. It was an
experience seeing new perceptions on the elusive subject of physical
relationship either between a man and woman or from people of the same
sex. One would agree that Sex Education for the young is especially
good, provided it is imparted in the right manner without being vulgar.
Let me confine my observations to just a few such films. I would be
brief.
The Last Summer of Laboyita by Julia Solomonoff was a revelation for
the central character in the film - a boy (really a girl) who was coming
to terms with reality of understanding that his gender was not one with
he was identified. The film features two young people: (presumably) a
boy of 14 years and a girl of 12 years. The ‘boy’ works in a farm owned
by a doctor. The latter works in the city. He visits the farm with his
younger daughter. She is innocent but finds the ‘boy’ behaving in a
mysterious ways. She is curious to find out and discovers that the ‘boy’
has a genital problem.
‘He’ is shy to tell others of his uneasiness since ‘he’ is becoming a
‘girl’ The young girl seeks the assistance of her father to help her
friend in overcoming the agony experienced. The doctor helps the poor
victim by overcoming the natural disorders in the physique. That’s the
story.
I liked this film for its sincerity and cleverness in making an
interesting story moving away from drab explicit showing of the genitals
to prove a point.
The acting of the young girl shows that she had been trained well by
the director to move at ease. What you don’t see by Wolfgang Fischer is
again a kind of crude reality of violence and frightening sex overtones.
To my taste this was bizarre and in no way soothes my tangled nerves.
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The Last
Summer of La Boyita |
A Day in Orange by Alejandra Szeplaki from Venezuela was interesting
from the point of view of how three unmarried young women living in
fantasies get cheated by their so-called boy friends. This is a film of
a generation of youngsters whose primary relationship with their
partners had only been having sexual relationship.
The seemingly paradoxical situations underline the charm of
pre-marital sex and the burden of carrying on with the consequences.
Just between Us by Rakjko Grlic is funny but basically the main meat
in the film seems to be straight sex with explicit exposure of the human
anatomy. Finally Mamas and Papas by Alice Nellisi is also a film in
which the main thing is sex. The protagonists undergo topsy-turvy
confusion in mixed up sex relationships.
The whole point in my attempting to explain this trend is this:
though sex in an open society in the west has become an accepted
commodity, the borderline between obscenity / pornography and artistic
portrayal with erotic element has become too thin.
And strange our audiences have become attuned to accept it without
any mischievous titillation. This is because Hindi and Tamil films too
have begun to explore these issues. These films were shown in December
last at the Kerala International Film Festival.
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