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Created Jul 08, 2007 06:45PM PST • Edited Aug 02, 2009 09:29PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Smart, Sexy, Passionate, French. A great date movie, with smart, sexy dialogue that manages to outweigh the impressively passionate sex. This fine Parisian relationship film – French title Une liaison pornographique – has all the hallmarks of French filmic culture: sophisticated, non-impulsive, restrained hedonism; extensive, well-crafted dialogue; and easy acceptance of sexual desire.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   This is not a movie that would ever be made in America. Aside from the fact that it is in French (big clue there, huh?), the casting is decidedly non-Hollywood. First Hollywood no no: The woman is no younger than the man, and probably a few years older. Second Hollywood no no: He is decidedly cuter than she, a fact clear to even a hetero guy like myself. Further confirmation of this: At one point the man scrunches up his nose at something the woman says, leading a woman a few rows behind me to exclaim ‘Oh, he IS cute!.’ Final Hollywood no no: she initiates the relationship and has what Seinfeld famously called ‘hand’ throughout. Of course Hollywood will probably ‘fix’ these casting mistakes on the remake by starring some voluptuously mis-matched couple like Richard Gere and Winona Ryder.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    All in all, this is a great date movie for those who like European (especially French movies). Sexy, smart, with great fodder for bedtime conversation. You even get a brief glimpse of the Tower, just to confirm that Paris remains a capital of cutting edge culture, old and new.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

    It’s rather a chaste film, considering it is about a couple who get together for the express purpose of engaging in some apparently deviant sex act. Cleverly, the film never discloses what the act is. (Perhaps the film should be called “Waiting for Goodbar?”) The principals won’t say, the camera doesn’t follow them into the hotel room when they perform it, they give no clue about the use of toys, uniforms or anything else. Oh, the delicious torment. What could it be? What could it be? It doesn’t even appear to be a form of intercourse, since when they decide to make love ‘normally’, the woman states her desire to dominate – to be on top – and this is received as a mild revelation by the man. The implication being that they are clueless to each others preferences in normal sex, even though they have been doing their special dirty deed for weeks by that time.

17. Sex Erotic 3.0

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

19. Rudeness Polite 1.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.6

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0