Even Ten Minutes is Too Long

Our sexual fantasies and our public selves don’t always match up. Incest doesn’t become any less icky with the “between consenting adults” or “the incestuous couple is hot” qualifiers, yet it was the fastest growing trend in pornography in 2018. I have, delicately put, responded to porn videos that I otherwise find disgusting (I have a complicated relationship with the work of Aarin Asker). It’s the taboo that’s exciting. So, the idea that women, even those identifying themselves as feminists, would have rape fantasies or fantasies in which they’re dominated by men, isn’t that far-fetched. It’s when these taboo sex fantasies are inflated into romances that #MeToo becomes #WTF?

One of the earliest mainstream movies to give life to this uneasy coupling of rough muffin buttering fantasy and gauzy romance was the 1986 film adaptation of Elizabeth McNeill’s novel, 9 ½ WEEKS.

From one angle, it reads like the outline for a by-the-numbers Playgirl short story: An attractive woman, successful in her professional life but unfulfilled sexually, meets a handsome, wealthy man who treats her to sumptuous dinners, shopping sprees with no spending limits, and thrusts her into sexual realms no other man had ever dared to, consequently giving her some of the best—perhaps the only—orgasms she’s ever experienced.

Sounds hot! But this is also the outline for a typical Lifetime thriller: A successful career woman meets a handsome, wealthy man who showers her with compliments, woos her with fancy dinners and expensive gifts, and pleasures her with mind-blowing sex. But her prince soon reveals himself to be less charming, treating her like a child, isolating her from her friends and family, demanding she wear what he wants her to wear, punishing her if she disobeys his instructions. The sex games become less playful and more uncomfortable. He is her master and she, his willing slave. Will she come to her senses before it’s too late?

A still from 9 1/2 Weeks, or
a 1980s perfume ad?

The two outlines don’t exactly mesh, do they? I haven’t read McNeill’s novel (there are only so many hours in the day), but based on what I’ve read about it, the Lifetime thriller outline better describes it. The novel was significantly darker, playing out more like a psychosexual horror story than kinky erotica. But “psychosexual horror story” just wasn’t the sort of shit studios were willing to risk financing in the 1980s, so a twisted romance is what we got.

Kim Basinger is Elizabeth, the aforementioned attractive woman. Elizabeth owns a successful gallery, but she’s been adrift in her personal life since her divorce. It’s established right away that Liz is sexually unadventurous, something conveyed by costuming (Elizabeth has a penchant for baggy sweaters) and more directly in dialog, such as when she accuses her roommate and business partner Molly (Margaret Whitton) of being “gross” and “perverted” for suggesting Liz owns a vibrator. That all changes when Liz meets John (Mickey Rourke), a handsome Wall Street broker who arouses her dirty tickle*.

Younger readers might be wondering what “Mickey Rourke” and “handsome” are doing in the same sentence. Hard to believe now, but before he fucked up his face with boxing and plastic surgery, and well before time took its toll, Rourke was actually kind of hot. He didn’t exactly do it for me, but, yeah, I could see why he was cast as the male lead of an erotic romance. Of course, 9 ½ Weeks could just as well starred present-day Mickey Rourke given that it is just one of many, many examples of movies that purport to appeal to the desires of female audiences yet only showcases the bodies women (you ladies just want to see tits, right?).

This is as naked Mickey gets for the entirety of 9 1/2 Weeks.

Looks aside, it’s not entirely clear why Liz puts up with John beyond a couple of dates. As played by Rourke—whose performance falls somewhere between Ben Affleck at the height of his early 2000s douchey-ness and a late-caree,r not-giving-a-shit Bruce Willis—John radiates more smarm than charm. Even if Elizabeth can see past John’s personality, and even if he’s found her G-spot, I still wondered why she didn’t break things off after he pays a carnival worker to leave her parked atop a Ferris wheel while the worker takes a coffee break. She at least responds appropriately when John tells her to face the wall and raise her skirt for a spanking: “Who the fuck do you think you are!?” Alas, she stays, persuaded by John’s phenomenal cunnilingual skills. It’s not until he subjects her to the roving hands of a Latina hooker that Liz loses her shit and runs away, hiding out at a Times Square sex show (no, really).

 Yentl for Protestants: Gentl.

I remember 9 ½ Weeks being hyped prior to its release as pushing the boundaries of what could be shown in an R-rated film. Indeed, the movie had to be cut to avoid an X (and appease fucking test audiences). Now, no one was expecting to see Kim’s split Basinger or Rourke’s erect Mickey, but when the film was finally released it was hard not to find its sex scenes… underwhelming. To director Adrian Lyne’s credit, the sex scenes are quite stylish, but of course they are. Style over substance is Lyne’s thing. (Lyne’s on set emotional manipulation of Basinger is less praiseworthy, even though it worked to the film’s benefit.) The scene where John teases a blindfolded Elizabeth with an ice cube is effective, and Elizabeth masturbating while reviewing art slides as Eurythmics’ “This City Never Sleeps” plays on the soundtrack is another standout scene. Other scenes, like the “sploshing” scene in which John feeds a blindfolded Elizabeth, or when Elizabeth cross dresses, are just silly. But more often than not, 9 ½ Weeks pulls its punches. It’s a movie that shows John and Liz purchasing a riding crop but never shows the couple using it.

No Means No—Unless He’s Hot, Hung and Rich

9 ½ Weeks doesn’t quite succeed as erotica, but it’s not a terrible film, just a tedious one. Screenwriters Patricia Knop, Sarah Kernochan and the late Zalman King (yes, he of The Red Shoe Diaries) don’t sidestep the toxicity of the Elizabeth and John’s relationship, even if they don’t quite sell their attraction beyond she’s pretty and he buys her things and makes her come. Elizabeth has agency, gradually surrendering her free will for love until she realizes that this relationship is costing her soul.

Poland’s answer to E.L. James.

Such character arcs are beyond the grasp of 365 DAYS, a Polish-made Fifty Shades of Grey knockoff currently streaming on Netflix. (I know Fifty Shades would be the more obvious companion to 9 ½ Weeks, complete with a Kim Basinger connection were I to review the whole series, but to do so would require renting the Fifty Shades movies, something I refuse to do. Besides, other people have done a more thorough exploration of both the books and the movies. You can experience one man’s pain for your pleasure here.)

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that most of the basics of storytelling, such as character development and plot, are beyond the grasp of 365 Days, a 114-minute rape fantasy that asks its viewers to accept a woman’s abduction and subsequent captivity by hot-tempered gangster as the springboard for a steamy romance.

“Imagine a strong alpha male who always knows what he wants. He is your caretaker and your defender. When you are with him you feel like a little girl. He makes all your sexual fantasies come true. What’s more, he’s one meter, 90 centimeters tall, has absolutely no body fat, and has been molded by God himself,” our heroine, Laura (Anna Maria Sieklucka), tells her girlfriend.

“Did God mold his dick, too?” the girlfriend asks.

“The devil did,” replies Laura.

Laura fails to bring up that the “strong alpha male” in question, Massimo (Michele Morrone, who can also be blamed for some songs on the soundtrack), also kidnapped her while she was vacationing in Sicily, held her prisoner, tied her up and molested her on a plane (“Sometimes fighting is futile.”), and repeatedly threatened her with physical violence. Also, he’s a Mafia boss who traffics drugs and kills people (but it’s OK, the man he kills is a sex trafficker). Then again, he got her away from her worthless boyfriend and he’s got that devilish dick. All is forgiven!

What makes 365 Days and its inspiration, Fifty Shades, especially repugnant is they conflate abuse with BDSM, rape with rapture.

You would be forgiven for thinking 365 Days was written by a 45-year-old incel while he was under house arrest for violating a restraining order, but no, it was written by a woman. Polish cosmetologist-cum-author Blanka Lipińska, perhaps realizing she could never be the next Olga Tokarczuk, decided to became Poland’s answer to E.L. James instead, writing her own trilogy of dirty books with regressive/offensive sexual politics. I haven’t read any of Lipińska’s novels as they have yet to be translated into English (also, I don’t want to), so I can’t speak to their quality or how close the movie adaptation follows the book. However, Lipińska is credited as a “screenwriting associate” and even has a small cameo in the movie, so I’m going to assume the author is at least OK with how the movie turned out. I’m also going to assume that, based on 365 Days, that Lipińska is the sort of woman who would respond to a friend asking for help out of an abusive relationship by asking what the friend did to provoke the beatings.

Queer Eye for the Stockholm Gal.

There is a small kernel in the existing story that could have, had the screenwriters seized upon it, made 365 Days a lot less problematic. One of Massimo’s henchmen, Domenico (Otar Saralidze), befriends Laura, kind of (this is a movie where shopping montages set to annoying Europop are used in place of character and story development). Had Laura and Domenico formed a romantic bond, with the plot hinging on Domenico helping Laura escape, then 365 Days could have been a palatable romantic thriller. It would definitely be a more exciting one. Instead, the Domenico character is little more than Laura’s occasional chaperone. Guess he didn’t have that satanic cock that Laura craves.

What makes 365 Days and its inspiration, Fifty Shades, especially repugnant is they conflate abuse with BDSM, rape with rapture. If imagining a swarthy, God-built Italian stud ripping your designer panties off against your protests and pile-driving you into multiple transcendent orgasms is what it takes to paddle your pink canoe down river, more power to you. But don’t try to convince us his threatening violence, confiscating your phone and holding you prisoner is romantic. A good rule of thumb: if your story requires a trigger warning for survivors of sexual abuse, your story is not a romance.

There is a sequel for 365 Days planned — Lipińska crapped out a trilogy, after all — so maybe the narrative redeems itself as it goes along, but I doubt it (reportedly, the other books in the series are just more of the same). The one positive thing about this movie compared to its American counterparts is it doesn’t hold back on the explicitness of its sex scenes (no backlit, fully clothed humping here). There’s nothing hardcore, as some reviewers have implied, but it’s definitely in NC-17 territory, unlike some other movies I could mention. And, while their characters display no discernibly human traits, Sieklucka and Morrone are easy on the eyes. So, out of a desire to cater to readers’ prurient interests while also sparing them the chore of watching this piece of shit, here are the time codes for movie’s “good parts”:

10:45 – Laura pleasures herself with a pink vibrator intercut with a scene of Massimo getting blown by a flight attendant. (Warning: even out of context, it’s impossible to pretend the B.J. is consensual.)

43:30 – Laura takes a shower, and Massimo joins her. No sex, just nudity, including some full-frontal flashes from both actors.

51:40 – Laura sexually teases Massimo, then tries to leave the room before closing the deal. Massimo responds by shackling her to the bed and then summoning another woman. The other woman, dressed in generic dominatrix gear, slinks into the room and proceeds to suck off Massimo while a bound Laura watches.

An ass molded by God himself.

1:06:53 – Laura wakes up and smells the Stockholm Syndrome, finally “consenting” to sex with Massimo, the pair going at it for six-plus minutes, a sequence that’s as sleazy as hardcore porn without actually being hardcore.

1:17:30 – A quickie in the bathroom.

1:32:10 – Rear entry while overlooking Warsaw.

You’re welcome.

But, seriously, you’re better off just watching a hardcore porn flick than this glorification of date rape.

Here’s a link to go to in case you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence: thehotline.org

*I owe Georgina Spelvin a dollar for the phrase “dirty tickle.”