Film Sex Miseducation
posted by on January 11 at 14:38 PM
I saw Deep End—coming to NWFF—at a screening last week and I’m still despondent. If the abstinence-only people really want to keep kids off of sex, they’d show more movies like this:
Deep End is Harold & Maude’s evil twin—both were released in 1971, both concern a boy’s sentimental education by older women, and both feature cars sabotaged for symbolic purposes and songs by Cat Stevens.
(Also in Deep End, a sexual rival spitefully runs over our hero’s bike—it all sounds so familiar…)
But where Harold is saved by his older paramour, Mike’s drives him insane. That scene in the poster above, where he’s reclining naked at the bottom of a dry pool and she’s finally going to deflower him? It’s so tragic you’ll want to cry.
But the Wikipedia entry and its plot summary in weird—French?—grammar is cheering (spoiler alert, etc.):
After the school Mike (John Moulder Brown), a 15 year old boy, finds a job in a public bathhouse. There he meets the slightly older Susan (Jane Asher), a provocative girl that soon invades Mike’s fantasies. Working in the bathhouse he will soon be molested by older women willing to have pleasure from him in exchange for bigger tips: Susan will reveal him that this is normality there. Mike’s obsession for Susan will soon grow, leading him to follow her in the night. Several episodes reveal this obsession: he tries to touch her breasts from behind when she is at the cinema with her boyfriend, watching an adult movie, and he is shocked when he finds a portrait of her in front of a strip-house. He steals the portrait and, after a fight with Susan, he will deep in the public bath’s swimming pool during the night, simulating sexual intercourse with the portrait.
Thanks, French film nerd, whoever you are.
Is this part of the NWFF 24/4 showing?
A friend of mine, Michelle, is doing the photography for that.
Now read that description again in a Borat voice. High FIVE!!!
In a related incident, Big Brother in France had to kick out one of the Houseguests after two of them, a man and a woman, were having public sex in the apartment swimming pool while being taped.
Naturally, the man chose to go, showing his Gallic gallantry in so doing.
The French love swimming pools. Although, from personal experience, I find it's not as fun as you'd think ...
@3 hmmm what's wrong with that? Not sure why they'd see the need to boot someone for sex in a pool. Every episode overseas has had a similar incident dating back several Big Brother's.
In other newz..
That would be a hawt summer job to work in a bathhouse full of horny women who give bigger tips to play with you.. talk about a wet dream job for a teen.
@) 4 ...
That would probably be a nightmare job for a teen. Gross, lonely middle aged and elderly women playing grab-ass?? That sounds traumatic.
In Eastern Promises, Cronenberg cast Jerzy Skolimowsky as drinky scowly "Uncle Stepan." Dang he was good.
That Wikipedia entry is misleading. Mike isn't "molested" by anyone. (I was at the same screening.) Yes, he does witness Diana Dors's molestation of herself--"Georgie Best! Georgie Best!"--but that ain't the same thing. But I agree with your use of the word "despondent." Deep End is a heartbreaker.
@4 - well, actually, most French people had the same opinion. They thought that sex in swimming pools was normal, especially if you were French.
It does appear to be a theme in French films, tho.
@5 You're exactly right. He's horrified.
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