In a different world, one that’s more intellectually adventurous and sexually liberated, a ticket to Peter Greenaway’s “8 1/2 Women” probably would make the perfect Father’s Day gift from a son to his dad.
In this highly sensuous examination of one young man’s relationship to his suddenly widowed father, the writer-director allows his male characters the freedom to openly discuss such normally taboo topics as the sex life of an aging parent and senility of the flesh. Inspired in no small part by Fellini’s fantastical “8 1/2,” in which Marcello Mastroianni was allowed to live out the Italian filmmaker’s fantasies, Greenaway’s “8 1/2 Women” permits Philip and Storey Emmenthal to share experiences typically reserved for analysis on “The Jerry Springer Show.”
What’s most endearing about the movie, though, is the warm friendship that blossoms between the two men after the death of the most important woman in their lives, and their remarkably candid conversations.
“It was a way to portray an ideal father-son relationship,” said Greenaway, in town to cast his next movie, which he describes as a “fictive history of uranium.” “As the oldest son, I had difficulties with my father, which were by no means unique. He died before I could make contact.
“What happens here is the son sexually educates the father, which is the way it could happen now … post-AIDS, and given the enormous knowledge kids have about sexuality. In my generation, it would have happened the other way around.”
Now, typical of the filmmaker, these guys aren’t just a couple of guys who decide to bond on a fishing trip. These are cultured gentlemen, both of whom enjoy great wealth and commute between businesses in Geneva and Kyoto.
To help alleviate his father’s profound grief, Storey invites Philip to partake in some of his own guilty pleasures. One of these is a passion for “8 1/2.” Not to reveal too much, but the Fellini classic inspires Dad and Jr. to turn the family chateau into a private brothel.
“We created this east-west axis, by setting the film in Geneva and Kyoto, two cities built on old-money foundations, where anyone can be bought,” Greenaway said. “It’s the ultimate male fantasy, and that’s what this film is about, `8 1/2′ male fantasies. Prostitution is an ancient profession, and it has been especially exploited by cinema.
“In the 18th Century, Geneva was a center of Calvinism, but, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it became the prostitution capital of the western world. Likewise, Kyoto–the capital of Japan before Tokyo–is old money, and one of the levels of hypocrisy there is that it once was the center of the geisha industry.”
Kyoto also happens to be one of the Japanese cities where the addictive gambling game, pachinko, flourishes in loud, garish casinos, one of which is owned by the Emmenthals.
Simato (Shizuka Inoh), a pachinko addict leased into prostitution by her family, becomes the Emmenthals’ first concubine, regularly donning geisha garb to satisfy their wishes. Among the other women are Toni Collette’s cashier-turned-nun, Griselda; Amanda Plummer’s animal-loving Beryl; Natacha Amal’s Giaconda, who desperately wants to become pregnant; and Polly Walker’s amoral Palmira.
If all this sounds more than a tad perverse, be advised that “8 1/2 Women” also contains a scene in which Philip and Storey stand before a mirror, compare their naked bodies and contemplate the ravages of age (“Will I look like him when I’m that age?” … “Did I look like him when I was that age?”). Then, these two lonely and needy men comfort each other by sharing a bed.
Thanks to Greenaway’s acute emotional sensibility and poignant approach to the foibles of these characters–along with Sacha Vierny’s stunning cinematography–the overall effect is far more artistic and literary, than twisted and exploitative.
Still, just the sight of a father and son sliding into bed together–however innocently–stretches the limits of what we expect to see on screen. So, just as with such earlier Greenaway works as “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover,” “Drowning by Numbers” and “The Pillow Book,” the easily shocked definitely should look elsewhere for their amusement.
“I wanted to create an extreme situation between the two men, whereby, in the face of grief … all sorts of doors open, all sorts of truths come out,” said the 58-year-old Welsh native, who trained to be painter, then branched into film, music and a bit of architecture. “I’m very curious about the body, and I’ve very much affiliated myself with what’s going on in the art world, where the body is a central focus. When it’s put in an artistic context, it has different legitimacies and traditions.
“There are other things at play, as well. The general cinema-going public tends to be a lot less informed artistically and far more conservative than I am.”
In “8 1/2 Women,” the live-in prostitutes “grapple with the men’s demands, but allow themselves to satisfy their fantasies. Eventually, though, those fantasies get stale, uninteresting and banal, and even the women want something more.
“They pick up the fantasies and run with them, much faster than the men,” he said. “In fact, Toni Collette’s character not only impersonates a nun, she becomes one. That really screws up the fantasy.”
Make no mistake about it, Greenaway doesn’t want his audiences to think they’re seeing something real. His movies are intended to be works of art, like any of his paintings or compositions.
Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, he even rejects the widely accepted notion that cinema is a narrative medium, and the best screenwriters and directors are those who tell the best stories.
“The cinema is supposed to be imagistic, but, in most films, you can see the director following the text,” he said. “Ever since Griffith introduced stories into cinema, we’ve been going the wrong way. If you want to tell stories, be a writer, because, compared with books, film is a very poor narrative medium.”
For the last 105 years, he observes, “our cinema has been based on the 19th Century novel, and the belief that you can’t have 25 different images. The filmmaker has to give one finite image.”
He acknowledges that his ideas constitute, at best, a minority opinion. Indeed, he’s grateful for the roughly 20 percent audience share for his work.
For Greenaway, “Success means continuity … being able to make a picture of various descriptions every 18 months. I’ve made nine feature films, and four of them have made their money back.”
His next film project, “The Tulse Luper Suitcase,” takes advantage of several cutting-edge technologies.
“The trilogy takes up six hours of screen time, as well as two back-to-back CD-ROMs, two DVDs and an Internet site, and a 26-part television series,” he said. “The ideal audience would see the films in a cinema, buy the CDs, plug into the Internet and also watch the TV series. All this ancillary material has to be part and parcel of the whole phenomenon, because we need a defining work, now.
“We’ve been talking about all this new technology, but, basically, it’s been used to spread data. It doesn’t exist center-ground, yet, as an aesthetic medium, for the examination of giant fictional schemes.”
When it does, Greenaway expects to be there to push the envelope even further.
