Due to technical circumstances beyond my control, I cannot get my SKIN-depth Look at the Sex and Nudity of Philip Kaufman's Films to add in the section about Henry June, so it is presented here as intended...
Henry June (1990)
In the early 1960s, Kaufman and his wife traveled through Europe where they befriended French-Cuban authorAnaïs Nin, a friendship that would serve as the catalyst for Kaufman's adaptation of Nin's memoir "Henry June." The memoir and film detail the relationship Nin (Maria de Medeiros) had with author Henry Miller (Fred Ward) and his wife June (Uma Thurman). Nin is taken in by the couple's freewheeling bohemian lifestyle that involves lots and lots of sex with lots and lots of women. Eventually she becomes disillusioned by this charade, realizing that their relationship isn't as stable or solid as they pretend it is, masking their disappointment with all of that sex, but nevertheless, helps Henry get his first novel "Tropic of Cancer" published.
The film features a glut of sexual encounters, many of them involvingMaria de Medeiros, Maïté Maillé,andBrigitte Lahaie—as Henry's favorite prostitute—going topless...
Far and away the film's sexiest scene, however, is a lesbian encounter between de Medeiros andUma Thurman. Although Uma never fully doffs her duds throughout the scene, it remains one of the most sensual and incredible lesbian scenes ever put on film...
The film's subject matter seemed to make it a perfect fit for the newly created NC-17 rating, and ended up being the first theatrically released film to bear the quickly stigmatized rating. Sadly, it has yet to shake off that stigma, and many of the major movie theater chains in America won't show films rated NC-17.
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