Empire Magazine
July 2002
By Mark Dinning

Don't say we didn't tell you. Back in issue 145, as Intimacy was pushing censorship boundaries and Molly Parker was only to keen to show us the centre of her world, we warned you that a wave of hard edged, female centric erotic fantasy was on the way. And this month that sweaty prophecy has been fulfilled, in quite spectacular style. Nicole Kidman and Halle Berry baring all in (respectively) Birthday Girl and Monster's Ball. Heather Graham and Ralph Fiennes (as written) doing more than just the last tango for Killing Me Softly. Diane Lane being Unfaithful. And thats just for starters.

The current new wave is at once a response to more permissive B.B.F.C. guidelines (erections and penetration are apparently fair game) and a throwback to the soft core celluloid that the advent of internet porn was supposed to eradicate for ever. "Oh, nothing goes forever" laughs Larry Murtaugh, who tracks cinema trends for accountants Deloitte & Touche. "Everything goes in cycles; after all, there are few genuinely good ideas in Hollywood. The '90's were quite a tame decade, a period of chastity following the conspicious consumption of the '80's. Now people are after a bit of hedonism again, some escapism to take their mind away from troubles in the world."

So, to set alongside the bracing controversy of Baise-Moi, make way for an uncannily accurate rehashing (it was rubbish then, it's rubbish now) of '80's soft porn hokum. And who better to deliver it than Adrian Lyne, the man behind 9 1/2 Weeks and Fatal Attraction, and this month exploring another deadly obsession in Unfaithful. "What's exciting about this kind of movie," Lyne argues, "is the actors. Thats why I do it - for the thrill of those moments when you feel they've chipped a bit of themselves off and given it to you, when, after a take, I'll say to myself, 'Damn! They were good!"

Frankly, they're not particularly good, but that's another story. Here is, of course, one of the first base marketing and creative lethargy. In other words: sex still sells. And Lyne is hardly the sole culprit. Chen Kaige, the author of Farewell My Concubine fame, appears to update Lyne's 9 1/2 Weeks with Killing Me Softly. "I wanted to make it because of its erotic element," says the admirably honest director. "I could never have filmed it in China, where censors are very powerful. Sex is an important part of human nature, and if you can't deal with sex, you can't deal with anything in life."

Of course, while Kaige may have had artistic intentions, the fact that Killing Me Softly is an international bestseller, with a built-in female audience, must have helped persuade the suits at MGM. Indeed, in a Summer gilt edged with the macho double-header of the World cup and non-stop blockbusters (Attack of the Clones, Spider Man et al), this months cluster can surely be no coincidence. Larry Murtagh agrees: "The World Cup traditionally hurts U.K. audiences, and there is an element of female counter programming going on. Just look at Unfaithful. In Fatal Attraction it was Micheal Douglas who played away from home. Now Diane Lane is unable to resist temptation." In short: classic '80's themes replayed from a female angle. Well at least the rambo revival will be interesting.

Interview with Heather Graham

Killing Me Softly must have required you and (co-star) Joseph Fiennes to get to know each other fairly well.

Well, it's a movie about sex, so we had to do some sex scenes. He was a very good person to do it with, 'cos he is very cool. We just joked about it. I was very trusting of him. Even though he cheats at cards. He hides his cards in his pocket, or drops them on the floor. Other than that he's a good guy. And this is an important movie, because the way we tell Alice's story is great. It's unique for a film to explore a woman's sexuality from her own point of view.

Alice? Who the f**ck is Alice?

She's an American living in London, with an English boyfriend who she is happy with. Then one day she meets this guy Adam and discovers a very passionate side to herself that she didn't know she had.

How did you feel about about filming the smutty scenes?

Well, (director) Chen Kaige is a really cool guy. Sometimes as an actor you feel like you're not giving your all, but you don't know how to get there. He can almost seduce the performance out of you.

Oddly enough your next movie, The Guru is about sex too...

Oh, in that movie I had the perfect platform for my ideas about sex. I end up teaching this guy tantric sex. He ends up being a guru of sex and I'm this kind of bimbo.

All in all, you seem to talk about sex a lot, don't you?

But that's not really my fault. You do an interview with someone for two hours and you have a provocative conversation about it. The magazine wants to sell copies of and sex sells magazines. So you can be talking for two hours about something else and they stick in the three quotes about sex. In every article they talk about sex. That's all they wanna know. It is really frustrating sometimes.

Killing Me Softly is released on June 14.