In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, we take a look at what gets lost in translation when an American studio remakes a French sex farce by comparing and contrasting 1984's Blame it on Rio with 1977's In a Wild Moment!
While certain brands of comedy, like slapstick, are universal, there are certain culturaldifferences that don't translate well in comedy. France being a much more sexuallyprogressive country in 1977 than America probably still is to this day, it's easy to see how they might find more humor in the concept of a man sleeping with his best friend's 17-year old daughter, who happens to be his own 17-year old daughter's best friend. No matter how enlightened a person might like to pretend to be, when it comes to this sort of stuff, it's kind of impossible for an American to see the humor in this situation were they to cast themselves and their own friends and daughters and friend's daughters in these same roles.
French directorClaude Berri was already well known for his French sex farces likeLe Sex-shop (1972)andLa première fois (1976) when he hatched this rather risqué take on a classicbedroom farce set-up,In a Wild Moment. Well known character actorVictor Lanoux plays the happily divorced Jacques, who has a vacation planned with his newly divorced friend Pierre (Jean-Pierre Marielle). Pierre brings his daughter Martine (Christine Dejoux) while Jacques decides to make his daughter Françoise (Agnès Soral) his plus-one as well. During a beachfront wedding one night, Pierre and Françoise end up having sex and though Pierre is instantly remorseful, he is also weak to fend off Françoise's further advances as the vacation presses on.
To the film's credit, it never tries to make Pierre likable, and Marielle is all to happy to embrace this aspect of his character. For example, Pierre and his daughter begin to quarrel when she discovers her father and her best friend are sleeping together, and one night when she comes home late, Pierre slaps her. I don't know what it is about French audiences, but they're much more likely to embrace an unlikable protagonist than the rest of the world. It's the backbone of quite a bit of French literature and film, yet another stumbling block in attempting to translate this story for American audiences.
That didn't stop legendary Hollywood director Stanley Donen (Charade, Singin' in the Rain)—who also just passed away earlier this year—from snapping up the rights and setting out to make his own version of this story, one with a lot more yuks ultimately titled Blame it on Rio. To write the screenplay, Donen chose highly respectedcomedy writer Larry Gelbart (Tootsie, M*A*S*H) and Charlie Peters, who just two years earlier adapted another sex farce into an American film with 1982's Kiss Me Goodbye.With this sort of pedigree behind it, one could be forgiven for expecting a much better finished product.
While it would be entirely unfair of me tohold a film made 35 years agoto the standards of current social awareness, simply comparing Blame it on Rio with the earlier version of the same story shows how woefully misguided this American remake was from the get-go. Donen, Gelbart, and Peters lean HARD into the comedic elements of the film and this turns the proceedings into a tonal mess. Things play out pretty much the same throughout the first two acts, with the major difference being that Michael Caine's Matthew—the Pierre surrogate here—isn't yet divorced, but rather taking a trial separation from his wife Karen (Valerie Harper, who also recently passed away).
This kinda makes everything this character does all the more despicable and ultimately nefarious, particularly when the story tries desperately to keep the audience on his side. When Victor (Joseph Bologna) discovers that his daughter Jennifer (Michelle Johnson) has been having sex with a man twice her age, he enlists Matthew in the hunt for the man, leading to more ridiculous hijinks. Finally, Matthew levels with Victor who just kinda shuts down.It eventually gets revealed that Victor has been carrying on an affair with Matthew's wife Karen, as if that is supposed to absolve Matthew of all the absolutely despicable things he's done over the course of the last few days.
Couple that reveal with the lack of a slap to daughter Demi Moore's face when she comes home late one night, and it's patently obvious that theremake thinks its premise hinges on Matthew's likability. The film seems to reason that if the audience were to desert their sympathies for him, the whole thing would fall apart. The film bends over backwards to make sure you still like him at the end of it all. The film's final, most ridiculous attempt to get in a laugh comes when Jennifer attempts suicide near the end of the film by swallowing a bunch of pills. This brings the characters back together after they've been angry with one another, and then it's revealed that she just took a bunch of birth control pills. Gales of laughter presumably would follow.
It's a real shame that this would be the final theatrically released feature film of Donen's long and storied career, particularly because it bears none of the hallmarks of his legitimately funny films of the 50s and 60s. It comes off as a pale imitator, desperately trying to make a decidedly French concept more palatable to American sensibilities.
Perhaps the biggest slap in the face toward Berri's original film is that neither he nor the film receive any sort of credit in Blame it on Rio. Berri's original idea, script, and film may as well not even exist as far as Blame it on Rio is concerned. I understand that times were different and things like this didn't receive proper credit the way they do now, but it's pretty egregious in this instance. At the same time,it's completely understandable why Berri was fine with not being associated with the remake in any fashion. Less complicity that way.
Initially I was going to include the 2015 French remake One Wild Moment, but that hewscloselyto the French original, so its inclusion was ultimately redundant. It's perhaps the most successful of the three, but that's like saying it's most advantageous to lose your pinky rather than your ring or middle finger. This story is pretty rotten no matter the language, but the only possible way to enjoy the nudity is devoid of its context entirely.
Next week, two of the UK's most respectable actors have actual, unsimulated sex, no rumors or conjecture, in 2000's Intimacy!
Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy...
—The "Real Sex" ofDon't Look Now
—Scarlett Johansson's Nude Debut inUnder the Skin
—The 2 Very Different Sex ScenesofBasic Instinct
—How Halle Berry's Nude Debut Led Her toMonster's Ball
—HowMulholland Dr.'s Legendary Lesbian Scenes Deepen the Film's Mystery
—Showgirlsand the Dangers of High Camp
—Rosario Dawson Laid Bare for Danny Boyle'sTrance
—Katie Holmes MakesThe GiftWorth Remembering
—Jennifer Connelly Comes of Age inThe Hot Spot
—Lisa Bonet's Bloody Nude Debut inAngel Heart
—Monica Bellucci Gets Brutalized in Gaspar Noé'sIrréversible
—Stanley Kubrick, The William Tell Overture, and A Clockwork Orange
—Wild ThingsPresents Every Man with His Dream Threesome
—Chloë Sevigny Goes Down in History forThe Brown Bunny
—Helen Hunt Does Her Best Nudity at 48 in The Sessions
—Anne Hathaway Wreaks Havoc on Her Disney Image
—Body HeatBrings Noir Into the 80s, Sexes Up the Genre
—The Master Gives Serious Drama its Horniest Protagonist Ever
—Analyzing the Dream Logic of Eyes Wide Shut
—Isabella Rossellini's Intentionally Unsexy Nude Debut in Blue Velvet
—Margot Robbie MakesThe Wolf of Wall Streeta Skinstant Classic
—Angie Dickinson Steams Up the Opening Credits ofDressed to Kill
—The Strange Sexual Dynamics of Dogtooth
—How the Remake of Oldboy Stacks Up Against the Original
—Bob Fosse's Dancers Take It Off inAll That Jazz
—Lindsay Lohan Finally Goes Topless inThe Canyons
—Noir Takes a Trip to the Isle of Lesbos in Bound
—Brian De Palma Gets Cheeky with the Opening Scene of Blow Out
—Julianne Moore Proves She's a Real Redhead inShort Cuts
—Madonna Touches On Her Basic Instincts in Body of Evidence
—Kelly Lynch Can Never Escape Her Road House Sex Scene Thanks to Bill Murray
—Jesus Gets Down Off the Cross to Get Down in The Last Temptation of Christ
—Milos Forman Removes and Later Reinserts Nudity into Amadeus
—Sissy Spacek's Dream Shower Becomes a Nightmare in Carrie
—Fantasy, Reality, and Horror All Collide in The Shining
—Barbara Crampton Gets Head From a Severed Head in Re-Animator
—Classic Horror Gets a Nudity Upgrade with Bram Stoker's Dracula
—Linnea Quigley Find New Use for Lipstick in Night of the Demons