Archive for April, 2008

“House of Sand” (”Casa de Areia,” 2005, Brazil) may not show up on our list of sensual films but it is an incredibly tactile film that will sweep you into its world of whirling, shifting, restless sand. From the start, I could not tear myself away and yet the story is slow with few characters and little action or dialogue. It’s that sand! While I can understand the heroine’s passionate desire to get the heck out of there, the film makes me want to experience that incredible sand. And while I like more sexual tension in a film to make it sensual for me, this aspect of the film definitely meets my sensual requirement of feeling and smelling and experiencing a place so I feel that I am there. Maybe a trip to Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in Maranhão State (northeastern Brazil and where the film was made) is in  order!

“How do you access your sensual side if you have a houseful of kids or you’re working overtime to run a business?…You can do it in a way that your kids or your employees will never pick up on. Buy a cashmere blanket and curl up in it while you watch television.” (Or select a sensual film for women from our library!) “Buy yourself wonderful chocolates and eat a piece slowly for dessert. Pay attention to your body every day by exercising: dance, yoga, even just stretching helps you get more in tune with your physical self. Sensuality should be a general part of life, not something you save for Friday night.” Interview with Sex Experts by Kristyn Kusek Lewis, More Magazine, May 2008

The search for new sensual film selections for women can be a long and disappointing one. For example, Netflix describes the Japanese film “Vibrator” (2003) as “a life-changing emotional journey of sexual self-discovery.” Between that description and the title you would think you would be in for something at least enjoyably sexual if not sensual, right? Whoa! What you get instead is a disturbing film about an emotionally damaged woman who takes up with a truckdriver for a peculiar, sometimes dull, road trip. While there’s sex, there’s not a lot of sexual self-discovery and it all seems kind of sad and desperate. The trip hardly seems life-changing–it’s more about how people can be messed up inside and barely keeping the outside together and they maybe/might/could possibly meet someone a little less messed up if they let that someone know how messed up they are and have sex in between those type discoveries. Sensual? I don’t think so…

Another disappointment (more predictable but you never know until you know you know) is “Killing Me Softly” (2002). The book that the movie is based on is described as “…about the passion and tenderness in violence, about what you have to lose…” but the movie is over-acted, under-scripted schlock. Heather Graham has great breasts and little acting talent (and who thought she should wear big glasses as a “disguise?!”)–Joseph Fiennes is just plain sleazy bordering on creepy. Sensual??? Ack!

Still, there is hope and when you find a real sensual film it is such a pleasure to share it with other women and save them the trouble of sifting through the mediocre, the bad, and the just plain ugly!