Ladies, see if this job pitch catches your eye. You are a seasoned professional in your chosen field for well over twenty years, have been recognized by your peers with some of the highest awards in your field and are generally considered to be one of the better professionals in your chosen field. Now, for the last few years, you have hit a rut and not made quite the same heights you were known for, but you have been putting in solid work nevertheless. Now, you are offered a new job with not as much visibility and you are told that if you spend approximately 60-80% of your time in the nude, you are guaranteed to make it back to the top. Now I ask you, doesn't this sound like every girl's dream job comeback? Hands? Anyone?
Now I wonder: what in the world possessed Helen Hunt, the Emmy, SAG, Golden Globe AND Academy Award winning actress to do a film where she spends approximately 40 minutes of a 2 hour film in the nude? She is not the first actress who has gone nude to give her career a boost (Meg Ryan, Elisabeth Shue, Rebecca Rominj, Tia Carrera, Drew Barrymore, Lindsay Lohan, Diane Keaton just to name a few), nor will she be the last, but it is kind of sad that this is one of the only ways that established actresses in a slump have to bring them back to the top. I guess it is only a matter of time before we see Meghan Fox do her first nude scene (she already played a prostitute twice-Jonah Hex and The Dictator). Anyway, we live in a time now that women have more opportunity than ever to make their own way in this world on their own terms. Hollywood, as liberal as they think they are, still operates by the same old rules. For the most part, actresses are a piece of meat to be exploited. Now don't mistunderstand, I am not a prude about this. If a role genuinely calls for anything, I don't have a problem with it. This includes violence, nudity, whatever. But the fact is, most of time, nude scenes are put in for their titilation factor, not necessity. For instance, necessary (Belle Du Jour, The Accused, Irreversible, The Reader, The Last Seduction) and unecessary (Leaving Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, any Bo Derek movie).
The movie is about Mark O'Brien (played by John Hawkes), a poet paralyzed by polio and essentially trapped in an iron lung most of his life. Through the help of his therapist and priest, he goes to see a sex surrugate, played by Helen Hunt. Through these sessions, he finds out a little about himself. Yes, that's it. I didn't find the movie particularly insightful or emotional. Really, the only emotion I felt was sadness for Helen. This is a woman who has been considered tops in her field for a very long time. It just seems like this was a role she did not have to take. But maybe that was the point. I do like that a film came out that can deal with the subject of sex in a mature and adult way without adolescent snickering in the background. Our country has a very strange predilection toward sex that may be left over from our puritanical days. I found it interesting that a movie filled with non-stop violence like The Ring, Batman: The Dark Knight or The Lost World is considered just fine entertainment for children, but a movie whose primary subject is sex is usually relegated to the NC-17 or pronographic world. There is a long history in Hollywood for trying to sell frank depictions of nudity and/or sex in a psuedo-educational or documentary fashion that started with the movie Mom and Dad all the way through this one. My primary problem with this movie is that it seems to be more about Helen Hunt being nude rather than telling a good or interesting story. Unfortunatly, most movies like this fall into this category. So if you want want to see Jaime Buckman nude, this is your film. But I found it fairly lifeless and unengaging. I genuinely hope this helps Helen's career and that she will continue making great films. She is a particularly gifted comedic actresses and I can only see her getting better. Unfortunately, since we are a culture that worships youth and beauty, this may have been her paying her dues so she can continue working. And that is a sad commentary on today.
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