Search - Erotica on DVD

Slow, tame, 1970s flick

Jeffery Mingo | Homewood, IL USA | 03/14/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Though filmed in the late 1970s, this was made in Technicolor. It has the look of "Bewitched," "I Dream of Jeannie," or Marilyn Monroe films. There are few words here. That detail was possibly inspired by classic French films. Still, any bilingual person walking down the street could have written the subtitles for this film. However, the subtitles have no apostrophes in their translations. So everything is cant, dont, or wouldnt. Additionally, the film moves very slowly.



Characters' looks are blatant signifiers of their personae. In a different country and more than a decade before the Rodney King incident, police are made to look bad here. They are the old, fat characters who are racist and domineering to boot. Of the two main male characters, the hairier one is obviously "the bad guy," though both men are equally, and deliciously, muscular. This movie is very light on sexual content. So that fact that the title and the ingénue role is called "Erotica" is shocking, especially given that the film takes place in a conservative, highly religious country. Like most (heteropatriarchal) films, there is female nudity, but no male nudity. In fact, the viewer can almost guess that the female nudity is the sole reason for the film to be made.



Rober McKee Irwin has written that much of Mexican, canonical fiction depends on the relationships between different men, as opposed to the usual ideas of important dyads based on heterosexuality, class-blending, or miscegenation. He basically states that much of Eve Sedgwick's ideas apply to Mexican literature. Well, the same is true in this film. As much as the lead actress is featured, she is really just a prop in the background between two warring men. This is less of a bizarre love triangle and more of two men trafficking in women, as Gayle Rubin would say."