Paprika

Tinto Brass has made some things worth watching in my mind. He chooses to make erotic films, which is fine by me.

I'm interested in erotic films. Naturally, they are enjoyable, the good ones that avoid the damages associated with porn. But they are something deep in us too, something having to do with performance.

In a real erotic film, you'll have an actress (at the very least an actress) who is performing as a character who is performing for us. In porn, there is no difference; in erotic art, there is. Tinto in his better works understands this, and plays with it — sometimes — in effective ways.

This film is worse in the way it works, and is better in how the story bends to the purpose. The story is about another layer of performing. Our heroine not only performs for our pleasure, but for also (as a prostitute) for a seemingly endless series of men.

So the setup is fine.

Making something that is erotic requires that the artist in charge decide what is erotic. Now that's a matter purely of style and not art. The choices he's made this time are different than the ones he's known for, though they seem superficially similar. But this woman is genuinely fat, thickwaisted. She has bad teeth and (the only thing that really matters) she carries herself gracelessly.

You'll want to pass on this one, I think.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.