One thing we have yet to cover in the first sevenSKIN-depth Lookswe've done is a director who doesn't fancy women. Todd Haynes is one of the few gay males directors to shoot a decent amount of female nude scenes, and nearly every nude scene in his films is lovingly composed and artfully lit.
Haynes began his career in the 80s with short films like the cult classic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, but he exploded in the 90s as one of the first directors of the "Sundance Generation" that bore Steven Soderbergh, Allison Anders, Robert Rodriguez, David O. Russell, and of course, Quentin Tarantino. Haynes' debut feature, Poison, took the Grand Jury Prize at 1991's Sundance Film Festival, and his actor-intensive approach led to him acquiring a stable of some of the biggest names in the industry: Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, etc.
While only four of his films feature female nudity, there are some strong themes running through all four of these films, often uniting in pleasantly unexpected ways.
Velvet Goldmine
For his third feature film—and second musician biopic following his Karen Carpenter/Barbie Doll experiment—Haynes decided to tackle the life of David Bowie. When Bowie discovered that Haynes was basing his film around a pair of unauthorized biographies, he stopped cooperating with the production and Haynes made major changes to the script to avoid a lawsuit. But it's kinda all still there.Musician Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) is a chameleonic figure who creates an outer space alter ego, fakes his own death, and reemerges as a completely new man.
The broad strokes are the same, but as they say, the devil's in the details, which is where this film makes enough separation. Ewan McGregor's character Curt Wild is sort of an amalgamation of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, embodying the American attitude, but also some Mick Jagger as well. The brilliant and amazing Toni Collette plays Slade's wife Mandy, and their first encounter culminates in them having crazy, wild, passionate sex...
There's an androgyny to this sex scene, and while there's no mistaking Toni Collette's amazing body and especially her ass, the distortion of shooting through water combined with the similarity of their hairstyles leads me to believe that Haynes was embracing the notion of fluid sexuality.This film embraces sex as a wild, uncontrolled, animalistic impulse and it's no wonder that virtually every character with at least three lines of dialogue ends up having sex with either Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor, Toni Collette, or all of them at once...
The gay sex obviously gets a lot more screen time than the straight sex, but that's fine. This was the late 90s, gay directors were finally allowed to depict gay characters in mainstream films that weren't raging stereotypes. Haynes is quite lucky, in hindsight, that his film didn't suffer the same fate as Mark Christopher's 54, which got butchered by Harvey Weinstein because he got cold feet over Ryan Phillippe and Breckin Meyer kissing. That film was pitched as a multiplex crowd-pleaser, though, while Haynes' flick had probably a tenth of the exposure that film was afforded.
Another interesting thing to note about this film is that it apes the structure of Citizen Kane, with its framing narrative involving a reporter named Arthur (Christian Bale) investigating the singer's fake death and interviewing all of the main players in his life. He diverges from Welles' film by also throwing in flashbacks to Arthur's own youth and sexual awakening, and the crucial role played by Brian Slade in his acceptance of himself as a gay man. I don't want to assume here, but I imagine there are many autobiographical details in these scenes.
I'm Not There.
Following his re-teaming with Safe'sJulianne Moore for 2002's Far From Heaven—which netted Haynes his first, and to date only, Oscar nomination—Haynes waded once again into the murky waters of a musician biopic, only this time, he didn't have to fictionalize things quite so much.
On the surface, I'm Not There. seems like a gimmick movie—five actors and one actress portray Bob Dylan at various points throughout his life—but in actuality, it's kind of the only way to tell Dylan's story. Dylan made a career out of being a chameleon, much like David Bowie, and Haynes takes that conceit literally by having Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, Marcus Carl Franklin, and Cate Blanchett play the musician at different eras.
Here again, as in Velvet Goldmine, he tends to favor an androgyny in this sex scene. Body parts are everywhere, but the two actors' milky white bodies tend to make it so that you're never entirely sure what you're looking at. Haynes is interested in sexual fluidity and definitely used his first few nude scenes to set that tone.
In the close-ups you can obviously tell which one is Heath Ledger and which one is Charlotte Gainsbourg, but one can't help butthink that the confusion seems to be intentional.
Mildred Pierce
Here's where things take a turn for the seriously sexy. The perfect marriage of director and subject thanks to Haynes' affinity for the 50's melodrama of Douglas Sirk and Britain's Gainsborough Melodramas. This five-part miniseries, based on the James M. Cain novel of the same name, gave Haynes the chance to really dig into the television renaissance and bring us nearly six hours of Great Depression melodramatic misery.
Kate Winsletand Evan Rachel Wood—two actresses who have never shy about showing some skin—play, respectively, Mildred and her oldest daughter Veda in the series. Those who remember the Oscar winning Joan Crawford adaptation of the book were likely shocked when Winslet doffed her duds in Part Two for a sex scene with Guy Pearce's Monty...
Gorgeously filmed, like something straight out of a Sirkian aficionado's wildest dreams. Winslet is a master at sex scenes and here she really conveys the passion she feels, being with a man for the first time since her loveless marriage ended. The way she plays vulnerability when she climbs atop him is next level acting stuff. The GIF is great, but head over to the page and check out the full scene, it's marvelous.
It's no great statement to saythat Kate Winslet is one of our finest actresses, but her commitment to intimacy on screen kind of really does set her apart from her peers like Cate Blanchett, whom we'll get to shortly.
To paraphrase a great saying, poor is the daughter who does not exceed her mother, and Wood outdoes Winslet in the finale, going fully nude in front of her mother after the revelation comes to light that she has been sleeping with her own stepfather...
Heavy stuff made all the more impactful through nudity, something that Haynes knows all too well.The scene is gorgeously composed, lit, and filmed, looking like something out of vintage full color nudes you might find at an errant flea market. It is one of the best nude scenes ever put on film, period, and Haynes' mastery of composition and color makes it so memorable.
Carol
Todd Haynes returns whole hog to the world of Sirkian melodrama for his sixth theatrically released feature film, once again set in the 50s. Having worked with Haynes previously on I'm Not There., Cate Blanchett likely had the full trust of the director when she accepted the title role of Carol Aird, an affluent divorcée who becomes infatuated with a beautiful but disaffected shop clerk Therese (Rooney Mara).
An hour and fifteen minutes into this film, the furtive glances and pearl clutching comes to an end when these two finally get down to business. The slow burn intensity Haynes has created in the first two-thirds of the film pays off in a way Sirk never could due to working during the time of the Hays Code. Carol's R rating allows Haynes to give us a very tenderly played and immaculately shot first actual physical contact between two women who, up until this moment, had been straight. Or at the very least, masquerading as straight.
The green color palate Haynes used on Mildred Pierce is used to great effect once again, but his amber is warmer here, giving this the vintage feeling he seems to have perfected. Credit must, of course, also be given to his DP Edward Lachman, who shot all of Haynes' films beginning with 2002's Far From Heaven. The two have made an art out of recreating 50s melodrama and fans of the genre should thank their lucky stars these two care so much.
As far as Blanchett goes, she does do her first nudity here since Elizabeth nearly 20 years earlier. Her three brushes with nudity in the interim were the work of a body double, but my guess is that she felt comfortable enough with Haynes and co-star Rooney Mara to know that the end result would be this stunning.
If you're already on the Todd Haynes bandwagon, I don't need to sell you on his estimable talents, but if you're looking for a director who has a firm grasp on style and can convincingly create films that feel like they're from another time, Haynes is your man. He is to Sirkian melodrama what Tarantino is to exploitation films, disciple and torch-bearer. Seek out his films, you won't be disappointed.
