After more than four months of no movies, I saw my first: Vaginas
Tight Shut.
I liked two scenes, mostly for the humour and texture -- the
foxtrot between Kidman and the Hungarian lecher, and the Mêlée
at the Serbian Costumier's (very reminiscent of Scorsese's Afters
Hours). But despite the few bits that are good, the whole is
pretty much a hollow shell. I'm rather shocked at the adulation
heaped on this movie.
While Kidman was unfaithful to her husband in her dreams and her
desires, Cruise couldn't manage a retaliatory infidelity in real
life, despite numerous half-hearted attempts. Stanley von
Wienerschitzler-Kübrick is telling us that fidelity and
infidelity are states of mind at least as much as they are
realised behaviours, that to distinguish between the two verges
on pettifogging. OK, sounds like a great idea to dramatise. SO
WHERE IS THE DRAMA in Vaginas Tight Shut?
We are given the husband's half of the drama, preposterous though
it is. Where is the wife's half? It amounts to a few mincing
confessions of illicit desires by the wife, plus the sequences of
writhing between (a silky mindbogglingly desirable) Kidman and
some naval officer that reside entirely in her husband's porno-struck
mind. Couldn't we have seen more of how these dreams of
infidelity affected Kidman's life and feelings? Couldn't we have
seen more of the dreams themselves? I mean, dreams are dramatised
in movies ALL THE TIME. Just how can a story which calls
attention to the neglected fact that infidelity can be a state of
mind show so little about that adulterous state of mind???
Even if we overlooked this rather crucial flaw, we'd still be
left with another. The film ends with the hint that husband and
wife have progressed to some new level of awareness about each
other and their relationship. If so, HOW DID THIS COME ABOUT?
Because Cruise was tailed and terrorised by the Orgy Society of
American Brahmins? How and why did Kidman change? We are shown
neither the transformation in their relationship, nor even any
implied material with which we might cogently speculate why the
movie ended the way it did. There's no there there, to paraphrase
Gertrude Stein.
And the acting! The two principals were incredibly leaden and
amateurish, as though they were rehearsing skits for drama school
admission. But this is probably Kubrick's fault. In most of his
movies, even good actors are browbeaten into delivering zombified
performances.
I liked the look of the film though: The Shining.
Final word on Stanley Kubrick: he was a dirty old man when he was
young, and he died a dirty old man.
