An endless mosaic of eroticism, literary, foods, and fashions. It is a film that traps you in its enjoyment, with no escape. It is offering this study of the artists mind, resonating with the carnal. If it is reaching for something it does not grasp, it is enough in the tactile of what is on screen, to arrive at what it is saying without saying it, perhaps, something about hedonism and ideology. Eroticism is the bravest frontier of cinema that will show you the subject of its artist in a direct way, so it drowns, dwarfs its intellectual interests, but this also becomes a full experience on screen. That is a lost artform by people like Lynn, Malle, Roeg, Bertolucci, only possible in that period of 80s and 90s. But where the film becomes crass in her going between the three men, it is countered by its cinematic elegance. Eroticism on screen can be taboo, frank, or titillating, Kaufman is a director who is totally awestruck by it. His film Quills arrives at this as well, an even greater film. Here is cast so modestly that you would not imagine these actors in such a grand way, the french girl, I never knew she had a whole film being cute. It is also a very odd role for Fred Ward, that uses his strengths in a new way. You see why people want to be actors. I liked Uma Thurman's puppeteering. One can complain about this movie. However to me these are the raw subject in parallel, to the point that style and substance is the same. I rate it highly because it gives the viewer everything that it promised, in fact way more. It makes me long for braveness in the arts again.
Review of Henry & June
