Our new column,Staff Picks, takes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme andthe "Staff Picks" section was the placetofind outwhat films were worthy of one's time.Of course, our version of Staff Picks has a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss out the films from a particular subgenre are the best to find great nudity. This week, we take a look at those daring French innovators that pushed the boundaries of sex, violence, pornography, and every conceivable combination thereof.
Coined by "Artforum" critic James Quandt, the term New French Extremity pertains to a movement in French cinema that began in the very late 90s and, according to some, continuesto this very day. The genre is defined by French films that revel in transgression of nearly every kind—sexual, violent, social, religious—to the point that their extremity is really the only point to the film. Directors such as Gaspar Noé, Claire Denis, Catherine Breillat, Leos Carax,Christophe Honoré, Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, and François Ozon are all associated with the movement, though not all of their films are considered a part of it.
If you're wondering if you've ever seen a New French Extremity movie, the answer is that you probably haven't because once you've seen one of these films, you don'tever really forget the experience. Nearly every film associated with the movement features aberrant behavior, often sexual or violent or both in nature, and many of the things that happen in these movies aren't easily forgotten. Some of these films have been remade in other countries, never to the same level of quality or success, proving that there is sometimes too much lost in translation when moving a story from one country to another.
These five flicks we've selected for you run the gamut of the genre, but there are plenty of other notable runners up that are worth your time as well. Sombre, Demonlover,Frontier(s), Pola X, Baise Moi, Ils (Them),and even more recent flicks likeBang Gang: A Modern Love Storyand Raw would make suitable further viewing. These five films we're going to look at more in-depth, however, are probably the five best examples of the subgenre—at least when it comes to nudity!
The Pornographer (2001)
Director Bertrand Bonello may not have been the first to blur the lines between mainstream film and pornography, but he was certainly at the forefront of the movement with his 2001 film, The Pornographer. Jean-Pierre Léaud, best known for his role as Antoine Donel in several François Truffaut films including The 400 Blows, stars as Jacques Laurent, a filmmaker who began his career in pornography before spending the 80s and 90s and dabbling in more mainstream work. Now, older and no less wiser, he has decided to return to pornography with the same demands with which he'd approach a big budget studio movie. Needless to say, he's met with quite a bit of resistance.
Starting with Léaud in the lead, Bonello went out of his way to cast respectable "mainstream" stars including legends like Dominique BlancandThibault de Montalembert from the recent Oscar-nominated filmIndochine, and up-and-comers like Jérémie Renier (The Double Lover) and Laurent Lucas, who pops up in a bunch of NFE movies like Pola X, In My Skin, and Raw.French actress/writer/director and former adult film star Ovidieplays Jenny, the star ofthe pornographicfilm-within-the-film, alongsidemale pornstar Titof.
Bonello wastes no time in getting to the hardcore section of his film, coming just 22 minutes into the flick's 108 minute running time. Ovidie and Titof have sex on the couch, with the crew eventually intruding the shot as they switch positions.Titof then stands on the couch and she blows him...
We switch camera angles for the money shot and it happens right on Ovidie's face...
As you might have intuited, the film's got well over an hour left after its only hardcore sex scene. While the title and this scene alone might lead one to assume this doesn't blur the line between mainstream and hardcore so much as it eliminates it, the meat of what Bonello is getting to is more concerned with the mainstream. It's a niceentrypoint for newbies to the NFE movement as a whole, but it doesn't sustain those transgressions like some of the other films we're talking about, like...
Trouble Every Day (2001)
The quintessential vampire movie of the NFE movement, Claire Denis' seventh feature film isn't a vampire movie in the traditional sense but more in the Vincent Gallo is a doctor/vampire sense. While this film would embolden the actor/director to make The Brown Bunny, Gallo wasn't quite America's official enfant terrible yet. He was becoming more known for his off-screen antics than his on-screen work, however, which is one of the reasons Denis was attracted to the actor in the role.Gallo plays Shane,an American doctor suffering from a form of vampirism, who travels with his wife June (Tricia Vessey) to Paris, ostensibly for their honeymoon.
The truth is,Shane is in search of an old doctor friend Léo (Alex Descas) and his wife Coré (Béatrice Dalle), who hold the secret to what Shane is seeking. Shane discovers that Coré has something similar to what he has, but her case is far more advanced and dangerous. Léo has spent the last several months covering up Coré's crimes as she has managed to escape their home and murder men after having sex with them. Things basically only gets crazier from there, so I'm not going to spoil much more than that, other than to say that the film is a trip and Denis uses Gallo, and her entire cast, to brilliant effect.
We get some underwater nudity from Tricia Vessey as she soaks in the tub...
As well as a bush-only nude scene from Béatrice Dalle as she flashes some randy intruders in her home, eventually seducing one of them...
Finally, Florence Loiret Cailleplays a doomed maid at the hotel Shane and June are staying at, but we get a nice look at her breasts when she changes in a bathroom early in the film...
Ma Mère (2004)
And now we get to the incest movie. Every list of New French Extremity movies should have one, and we've got two actually—though Enter the Void's not so doggedly focused on it as Ma Mère or My Mother. Isabelle Huppert plays mother to Louis Garrel, and already you can see where this is headed. Garrel is the virginal young Pierre returning home from Catholic boarding school to see his parents when his father suddenly dies of a heart attack. With his father gone, his mother soon becomes focused on helping her son become more sexually experienced, awakening something in both of them. Something gross.
DirectorChristophe Honoré adapted the controversial novel of the same name byGeorges Bataille, which culminates in one of the more psychologically disturbing climaxes in cinema history. If you've seen Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives, imagine that film's final interaction between Ryan Gosling and Kristin Scott Thomas but with masturbation added to the bloody equation. Branded with an NC-17 rating that wasn't appealed—it was eventually lifted altogether when the film adopted an Unrated designation—the film obviously didn't find much love outside of France, though it has its defenders.
The nudity is top notch, however, as Huppert parades in an endless stream of women for her son or her—or both of them—to have sex with like Emma de Caunes...
And Joana Preiss...
Martyrs (2008)
Congrats on getting this far, your reward is perhaps the most difficult film on our list to watch. Of all the extreme French "horror" movies of the period and the movement—includingHigh Tension, Sheitan, Inside—Martyrs is probably the most wholly successful of the bunch. It goes to some extreme places, but it does have a satisfying conclusion in comparison to some of the other films mentioned. The film focuses on two girls, Lucie and Anna, who share a room at a mental institution in the 1970s. Lucie is haunted by visions including that of a terrifying apparition of an emaciated woman (Isabelle Chasse).
Their story picks up fifteen years later when Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) and Anna (Morjana Alaoui) cross paths again and are set on a course for a shocking and horrifying final hour. To say any more—and I've already left out some crucial details—would be to ruin your experience. Avoid anything further, includingthe nude scenes below, and check this movie out. If you think you can handle it.
Morjana Alaouigoes topless late in the film, along with Emilie Miskdjianas a horribly disfigured girl discovered by Morjana...
There's also nudity from Isabelle Chasse as the pale creature attacking Lucie in the beginning of the film...
Enter the Void (2009)
Really any Gaspar Noé film could go on this list, but I find2009's Enter the Voidto be the filmmaker'smost watchable movie. It's a bit like saying if I had to lose a finger, I'd choose my pinky because it's the one I could get along best without. I am not a fan, though I find myself to watch everything he does, usually only once. In fact, I think this may be the only film of Noé's I've seen more than once. It still has many of his hallmarks, just without any of the brutal sexual assault he seems to enjoy so much.
Told fromthe mostly detached first person point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), the film follows his life as a drug dealer in Tokyo living with his younger sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta). Things spiral out of control for the young man quickly and he is eventually shot and killed by police at the end of the film's first act, and relax, that's hardly a spoiler. The film then floats above the action, maintaining Oscar's POV as he becomes detached from everyone's lives as they continuewithout him. It's sort of a meditation on what potentially happens to us after we die, in as much as it's about anything at all, really. It's just a director who loves his gimmicks playing around with them, and like many of his films, it kinda goes off the rails in the third act—but in a good way.
It's also got tons of nudity, not all of it pleasant, but enough actually sexy stuff to make the unpleasant stuff a touch more bearable. Paz de la Huerta goes all out, as expected, baring her breasts while working as a stripper early on, and later showing bush when she undergoes a medical procedure...
Janice Béliveau-Sicotte plays Oscar and Linda's mother and we see her breasts in the tub with them as children when Oscar begins flashing back through various episodes from his childhood...
Finally, we have Sara Stockbridge going topless for a sex scene late in this 2 hour and 41 minute movie...
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