Every so often a nude scene gets paired with a song that, for better or worse, ends up making it that much more memorable, and we’ve got another two-fer this Tunes-day. In only the second post of Songs in the Key of Nudity, we looked at the almost universally-derided sex scene in Watchmen set to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” noting that Cohen’s vocals may have added to the awkwardness.
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But there have actually been a few sex scenes set to Cohen’s dulcet bass that haven’t gathered as much ire as the scene in Watchmen so today we’re looking at two of them to see what makes them work - if they do, in fact, work at all.
The first is the 1998 drama Kiss the Sky, about two middle-aged men who have a devil’s three-way with Twin Peaks star Sheryl Lee nude set to Cohen’s 1984 song "Dance Me to the End of Love."
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The second is the 2012 comedy-drama Take This Waltz which features a sex montage with star Michelle Williams nude set to Cohen’s song of the same name from 1986.
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While Kiss the Sky was mostly seen for what it is - a mid-life crisis movie for male Boomers - the film’s threesome didn’t entice audiences the way director Roger Young had hoped. Not even addressing the film’s overarching homoeroticism, Nathan Rabin of the AV Club wrote that “Kiss doesn't descend into science-fiction-level implausibility until Lee decides to engage in a threesome with [William] Petersen and [Gary] Cole, leading to an excruciating scene that suggests a Playboy video recast with veteran character actors.” So perhaps this time the music is actually not to blame for the scene being off-putting. Or if it is, perhaps it’s not Cohen’s voice but the song itself since, according to a 1995 interview with Cohen, the song was inspired by the Holocaust. So yeah, maybe not the the best choice.
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Cohen’s presence certainly didn’t affect Roger Ebert’s (and others) glowing review of Take This Waltz. Obviously, you’d expect the song to be in there since it’s also the name of the movie but Ebert specifically makes reference to Michelle’s sex montage in his review, noting it may just be a figment of her imagination, but also writing “uninhibited sex, sometimes involving threesomes, in a grand open apartment that resembles a ballroom, through which the camera makes waltz-like swirling, 360-degree movements encompassing several seasons. This is accompanied by Leonard Cohen singing 'Take This Waltz', his mysterious version of Federico García Lorca's 'Little Viennese Waltz', a surreal, erotic poem of love, death, longing and desire.” It seems to help if the song’s theme and the scene’s theme actually coincide.
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I guess consider this my rescinding of any allusion to the idea that people think Leonard Cohen’s voice isn’t sexy. Though we can all admit that seeing beautiful boobs, butt, and bush from hotties like Sheryl and Michelle definitely adds to any appeal.
Catch Up With Previous Editions of Songs in the Key of Nudity
—An Early Work from a Dutch Master Baiter
