First Desires

This is typical Hamilton. Gorgeous teenage girls and dreamy photography. I must disagree with one of the comments from another poster saying there is no nudity in the film. He must have seen a cut version. I have to say I don't think the plot or the acting are the strong points of Hamiltons movies. It does feel sometimes like a voyeuristic excuse to present beautiful young women in varying degrees of nudity. This may be quite transgressive of western (specially American) taboos, which equate nudity to porn. Overall a quite unique film. Try to get the uncut version because, quite frankly, the whole point of Hamiltons focus is the female body, (he is mainly a photographer after all)

Beautifully photographed, lovely young women, virtually no plot or plot motivations. I guess this is a genre of French cinema. Three young women take a boat out on the sea at night. They are lucky to survive when the boat gets wrecked. One of them lies unconscious on the beach and is rescued by a handsome boy. Soon they are sort of owning the island and having various encounters with some young men they have met. All three, plus a beautiful concert pianist, are hard to take your eyes off of. But at some point it slogs along to where there are no real questions. I watched it because the Criterion Collection included it and I have been picking an choosing from their library of films. This one really turned out to be a waste of time. Lots of standing around, posing, and laughing, and doing little else.

So here's the last movie photographer-turned-filmmaker-wannabe David Hamilton made. It's more of the same. There is minimal plot and characterisation. The movie mostly just shows girls running around on some idyllic island, in and out of their clothes.

The movie also has Hamilton's constant theme of unrequited love. Here, three girls wash up on an island, where one of the girls falls in love with an older man, but he's already married. And a younger guy falls in love with her, whereas his brother (I think) falls in love with one of the other girls. The brother is a fat guy who looks like that stock character in all eighties sex comedies, you know, the fat-guy-who's-always-eating. He's not always eating here, though, nor is he supposed to be funny.

Hamilton's movies all look like one of his photography books come to life. His soft focus and idyllic locations make the movies seem like recorded dreams. Perhaps they're Hamilton's himself. This also keeps you at bay from any story or characterisation, so I guess its' just as well there's generally not much of an attempt at either in his movies.

I'm glad this is the last one, so I won't have to watch any more. If I see one more soft-focussed bowl of fruit, I'll explode.

It's also worth noting that the girls in "First Desires" aren't even that good looking, despite the fact that they are presumably all models. This is worth noting because the girls in Hamilton's flicks usually aren't that great looking, surprisingly. The camera also shows little of their faces anyway. It's more interested in their bodies.

This film makes you really appreciate the invention of the fast forward button on your remote control. It's exquisite boredom in beautiful pictures. For once Hamilton goes relatively easy on soft focus shots. However, what I found hard to take about the film was that although Anja Schüte was about 19 when it was shot the girls are portrayed as much younger than they actually are. This whole Lolita thing especially as there is an older man involved leaves me rather uneasy. The heroine is actually shaved in the pubic area in order to make her look even younger than she is. Come on, sex is a nice past time- between consenting adults. Another thing I found odd was that neither Beart nor Schüte have a nude scene in the film, well, not a proper one at least.

One star for the "plot". One star for the acting. One star for the dubbing into squeaky-voiced American. Five stars for Monica Broeke and Inge Maria Granzow, with their propensity for taking all their clothes off. And ten out of ten for the divine Emmanuelle Béart, two years before she made 'Manon des sources'. Béart also undresses a couple of times, but even fully-clothed her presence is enough to make this film eminently watchable. Watch out for the scene where she tells her friend about the three "first times" for a girl. It's corny, but still far more erotic than the rather laughably choreographed "love scenes" featuring Broeke, Granzow and Patrick Bauchau. Incidentally, the cinematography is not great; the stills for the closing credits are a better indication of what David Hamilton is capable of.