Good Acting Is Sexy
Jul. 30th, 2004 03:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marnanightingalePretty is a wonderful thing, but I want to rant about acting, especially acting and sex.
(with many thanks tofairestcat, who dealt with helping me organize this post cause my html falls apart when I am tired.)
Especially Acting, Sex, and Sam West, cause, really. Does it get better?
It's too damned easy to call in the sex scenes, especially if you're male. Everybody'll let you slide on it, usually.
The viewers will catch you, but it's not like we're overloaded with either vocabulary to express our annoyance in or other choices.
Hollywood still has a very porn movie approach to sex scenes, at least to ones that are meant to be sexy, even as it swears blind that it's there to advance the plot: in terms of how the scenes are scripted, set and shot, everything is there to show off the actress's body, including the man.
So I've babbled at various times about sexual scenes that I think are really well done, andq_skud_ sort of prodded me until agreed that maybe I could gather some of it up, edit it, post it, and see if a discussion happened.
First, the Fan Scene from Stiff Upper Lips: technically, not a sexual scene.
Hands up anyone who believes that?
Right.
Most of all: GUH.
And I am going to stand right here and say that if the effects of what I am seeing stop at my brain -- it's not a good scene.
Jude Law's brilliant work in Wilde makes me want to cover my eyes and run away from what I'm seeing, despite the fact that it's objectively quite lovely to look at.
That's good acting.
But in general, a sex scene should hit the viewer the same way any other good scene is meant to; brain, heart and body.
And this one does.
The GUH factor. The GUH factor takes a LOT of talent and skill to get there. And pure technique.
The sweat. Note the sweat. The stress around the mouth. The tongue. The change in expression when he looks at Cedders. The fact that this is a long, complex double entendre: everything he's doing can, as individual actions, be attributed to heat or mild exertion or Trying To Think how To Put This. But there is no moment when you're buying it -- you know what you're looking at and what you are looking at is desire. That's technique.
The GUH factor also takes guts, because it's sexual, and that's hard to do. Scary hard as well as difficult.
On top of that, we have a few extra challenges:
It's a male-male scene. Between sympathetic but comedic characters. It's a funny scene. And it's wanking.
Yes. It's a wank joke. And it's SO GUH that while you're laughing yourself stupid you want to crawl into the screen and lick the sweat off his neck. For starters.
That's HARD. REALLY HARD.
Cause, first? It's wanking. Which is much scarier to do on-screen than a sex scene.
Second? It's wanking and you go in there knowing that the audience is GOING to laugh at you. Cause it's a set up.
And we socialise ourselves -- especially males -- to find the whole topic of wanking funny, pathetic -- definitely not sexy.
Thirdly, it's EDDERS. Who is, well, he's awfully cute. But he's not a sex god. This is where capping works badly for Sam West. He's an actor whose craft is very much in motion and voice and shifting facial expressions, and it's hard to capture that well in stills.
Edders, despite having the inestimable advantage of having the use of Sam West's body, which is a) fucking beautiful and b) inhabited by Sam West, who when he WANTS to is perfectly capable of levelling small villages by walking down their main streets with one eyebrow raised --
is in fact pretty resistible in most of this movie.
And then you get this scene. This deranged wank joke. And he does it so well you fall for it, wholeheartedly, willingly, even while you're laughing. The whole scene is too damned sexy to be believed and it keeps working after you know you've been set up.
Because it has absolute authenticity. That is a little piece of Samuel West up there, filtered through years and years of hard learned technique.
And it's the authenticity that draws you in, just as the technique lets you watch it without feeling like you ought to turn away.
Because I don't know how Sam West felt about this scene, but I know how Edders feels. Edders has nothing to be ashamed of, and so he is not ashamed. So neither are we.
That's also what has you laughing at the right thing, instead of the cheap laugh.
If you were laughing because 'oh, it's wanking, fnarf fnarf' -- the scene would have failed. if you were laughing at the desire, the scene would have failed.
He makes you laugh not because of what he's doing, not at the desire, but at the total inability of both of them to cope with it.
The desire? The desire is real, and you see it, and it's absolutely treated as honourable.
He makes you see that Edders is doing the right thing, in the wrong bed, and doesn't know what to do next. He's balls-over-head in love, and in lust, and it's with CEDDERS. Who is, well. Deflecting him. And Edders has no idea what to do about that, cause, and we know this too, from this scene, he knows that when Cedders doesn't want to understand a thing, he does not understand it, and that's that.
Edders has no sense. Cedders has no guts. Your basic love story.
And after this scene, you're cheering for Edders, and you even love him a little. Because Edders, who really isn't very good at much, turns out to be very good at love.
And finally, he does something even Cedders can't ignore:
See that? That is the face of a man who finally knows exactly what he's doing, and why, and has no more doubts.
And that is why I think that this scene is in its way as good as anything he's done in Spies, or in Hamlet or in any other 'serious' work.
Good sexual comedy with heart and balls. There just is not enough of it out there.
Second, Carrington. Gerald Brennan. Being seduced, against his judgement and against his best interests, but not against his will, by Dora Carrington.
black_hound screen-capped this scene and posted the results to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
samuel_daily, and here they are, in a different order:
What the screen-caps can't really capture here is the whole deer-in-the-headlights-this-is-a-very-bad-idea-oh-god process of the whole scene. The one in the barn comes close.
There are damned few people who can keep up with Emma Thompson at her best -- AT ALL. And here's she's doing what she is best at: complicated female characters living extraordinary lives, but shown in the day to day bits and pieces.
This is a woman who made me bawl like a baby in Love Actually: turned half-away from the camera, without saying a word.
And here is Sam, playing Gerald.
And he is beautiful and she wants him. And she's beautiful, and he's fascinated by her, and everything he really wants from her she has already given away.
Actually, he's half in love with her from the start.
Not being a stupid man, he clears off to Spain. But, being a man who is drawn to what he really should stay away from, he comes back.
And, well. Eventually, she gets him. As we knew she would. As he knew she would.
And the scene in which she seduces him is brilliant. And again; there's no dialogue to matter here. It's all motion and expression, and it's perfect for both characters.
She's finding out that she can seduce a man through sheer force of will. She is not an unkind woman, but she is self-absorbed, and she's fascinated with this power, she's fascinated with the rush of having the upper hand, and at the same time it's actually sexually not what she wants. What she wants is someone forceful. So she goads. Rather expertly and quite ruthlessly.
And he consistently has ALMOST enough sense to stay out of this situation which is going to be disastrous for him, but Gerald has a very clearly marked set of buttons, and has run up against someone who is cocky, arrogant, and self-centred enough to keep leaning on them until he cracks open and starts acting like what she wants instead of who he is.
It is disturbing, and hot, and disturbingly hot, watching a man get taken apart like that.
And infinitely more appealing and complex (that's me looking for fancy ways to say brilliant acting with a serious side-order of GUH) than the standard movie sex scene, especially as there's a transformation from going-down-helplessly-for-the-third-time to-assertive-to-aggressive in there that STILL manages to convey that he's completely not driving this bus ... he's just been poked until there's nothing else, really, that he can do.
And yeah, he's enjoying it. It is a series of choices he's making. He half-wishes he wasn't, because he knows he doesn't want to be the next deer in that set of headlights, but he is choosing.
Even here,
There's some tension. A little bit of "I will not think too hard"
And it ends badly, as these things do.
And ultimately, there's a kind of clear-eyed forgiveness, conveyed completely wordlessly, just by Gerald's presence in the later scenes, a sort of Yes, this is her and Yes, this is me, and no other end was ever possible, and it's nobody's fault.
He never hates her, so we never hate her. Want to smack her, yes, but we never hate her.
Made me think of Yeats' No Second Troy:
"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
...
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?"
All this, and I swear: I think he has 20 lines.
(with many thanks to
fairestcat, who dealt with helping me organize this post cause my html falls apart when I am tired.) Especially Acting, Sex, and Sam West, cause, really. Does it get better?
It's too damned easy to call in the sex scenes, especially if you're male. Everybody'll let you slide on it, usually.
The viewers will catch you, but it's not like we're overloaded with either vocabulary to express our annoyance in or other choices.
Hollywood still has a very porn movie approach to sex scenes, at least to ones that are meant to be sexy, even as it swears blind that it's there to advance the plot: in terms of how the scenes are scripted, set and shot, everything is there to show off the actress's body, including the man.
So I've babbled at various times about sexual scenes that I think are really well done, and
q_skud_ sort of prodded me until agreed that maybe I could gather some of it up, edit it, post it, and see if a discussion happened. First, the Fan Scene from Stiff Upper Lips: technically, not a sexual scene.
Hands up anyone who believes that?
Right.
Most of all: GUH.
And I am going to stand right here and say that if the effects of what I am seeing stop at my brain -- it's not a good scene.
Jude Law's brilliant work in Wilde makes me want to cover my eyes and run away from what I'm seeing, despite the fact that it's objectively quite lovely to look at.
That's good acting.
But in general, a sex scene should hit the viewer the same way any other good scene is meant to; brain, heart and body.
And this one does.
The GUH factor. The GUH factor takes a LOT of talent and skill to get there. And pure technique.
The sweat. Note the sweat. The stress around the mouth. The tongue. The change in expression when he looks at Cedders. The fact that this is a long, complex double entendre: everything he's doing can, as individual actions, be attributed to heat or mild exertion or Trying To Think how To Put This. But there is no moment when you're buying it -- you know what you're looking at and what you are looking at is desire. That's technique.
The GUH factor also takes guts, because it's sexual, and that's hard to do. Scary hard as well as difficult.
On top of that, we have a few extra challenges:
It's a male-male scene. Between sympathetic but comedic characters. It's a funny scene. And it's wanking.
Yes. It's a wank joke. And it's SO GUH that while you're laughing yourself stupid you want to crawl into the screen and lick the sweat off his neck. For starters.
That's HARD. REALLY HARD.
Cause, first? It's wanking. Which is much scarier to do on-screen than a sex scene.
Second? It's wanking and you go in there knowing that the audience is GOING to laugh at you. Cause it's a set up.
And we socialise ourselves -- especially males -- to find the whole topic of wanking funny, pathetic -- definitely not sexy.
Thirdly, it's EDDERS. Who is, well, he's awfully cute. But he's not a sex god. This is where capping works badly for Sam West. He's an actor whose craft is very much in motion and voice and shifting facial expressions, and it's hard to capture that well in stills.
Edders, despite having the inestimable advantage of having the use of Sam West's body, which is a) fucking beautiful and b) inhabited by Sam West, who when he WANTS to is perfectly capable of levelling small villages by walking down their main streets with one eyebrow raised --
is in fact pretty resistible in most of this movie.
And then you get this scene. This deranged wank joke. And he does it so well you fall for it, wholeheartedly, willingly, even while you're laughing. The whole scene is too damned sexy to be believed and it keeps working after you know you've been set up.
Because it has absolute authenticity. That is a little piece of Samuel West up there, filtered through years and years of hard learned technique.
And it's the authenticity that draws you in, just as the technique lets you watch it without feeling like you ought to turn away.
Because I don't know how Sam West felt about this scene, but I know how Edders feels. Edders has nothing to be ashamed of, and so he is not ashamed. So neither are we.
That's also what has you laughing at the right thing, instead of the cheap laugh.
If you were laughing because 'oh, it's wanking, fnarf fnarf' -- the scene would have failed. if you were laughing at the desire, the scene would have failed.
He makes you laugh not because of what he's doing, not at the desire, but at the total inability of both of them to cope with it.
The desire? The desire is real, and you see it, and it's absolutely treated as honourable.
He makes you see that Edders is doing the right thing, in the wrong bed, and doesn't know what to do next. He's balls-over-head in love, and in lust, and it's with CEDDERS. Who is, well. Deflecting him. And Edders has no idea what to do about that, cause, and we know this too, from this scene, he knows that when Cedders doesn't want to understand a thing, he does not understand it, and that's that.
Edders has no sense. Cedders has no guts. Your basic love story.
And after this scene, you're cheering for Edders, and you even love him a little. Because Edders, who really isn't very good at much, turns out to be very good at love.
And finally, he does something even Cedders can't ignore:
See that? That is the face of a man who finally knows exactly what he's doing, and why, and has no more doubts.
And that is why I think that this scene is in its way as good as anything he's done in Spies, or in Hamlet or in any other 'serious' work.
Good sexual comedy with heart and balls. There just is not enough of it out there.
Second, Carrington. Gerald Brennan. Being seduced, against his judgement and against his best interests, but not against his will, by Dora Carrington.
black_hound screen-capped this scene and posted the results to samuel_daily, and here they are, in a different order: What the screen-caps can't really capture here is the whole deer-in-the-headlights-this-is-a-very-bad-idea-oh-god process of the whole scene. The one in the barn comes close.
There are damned few people who can keep up with Emma Thompson at her best -- AT ALL. And here's she's doing what she is best at: complicated female characters living extraordinary lives, but shown in the day to day bits and pieces.
This is a woman who made me bawl like a baby in Love Actually: turned half-away from the camera, without saying a word.
And here is Sam, playing Gerald.
And he is beautiful and she wants him. And she's beautiful, and he's fascinated by her, and everything he really wants from her she has already given away.
Actually, he's half in love with her from the start.
Not being a stupid man, he clears off to Spain. But, being a man who is drawn to what he really should stay away from, he comes back.
And, well. Eventually, she gets him. As we knew she would. As he knew she would.
And the scene in which she seduces him is brilliant. And again; there's no dialogue to matter here. It's all motion and expression, and it's perfect for both characters.
She's finding out that she can seduce a man through sheer force of will. She is not an unkind woman, but she is self-absorbed, and she's fascinated with this power, she's fascinated with the rush of having the upper hand, and at the same time it's actually sexually not what she wants. What she wants is someone forceful. So she goads. Rather expertly and quite ruthlessly.
And he consistently has ALMOST enough sense to stay out of this situation which is going to be disastrous for him, but Gerald has a very clearly marked set of buttons, and has run up against someone who is cocky, arrogant, and self-centred enough to keep leaning on them until he cracks open and starts acting like what she wants instead of who he is.
It is disturbing, and hot, and disturbingly hot, watching a man get taken apart like that.
And infinitely more appealing and complex (that's me looking for fancy ways to say brilliant acting with a serious side-order of GUH) than the standard movie sex scene, especially as there's a transformation from going-down-helplessly-for-the-third-time to-assertive-to-aggressive in there that STILL manages to convey that he's completely not driving this bus ... he's just been poked until there's nothing else, really, that he can do.
And yeah, he's enjoying it. It is a series of choices he's making. He half-wishes he wasn't, because he knows he doesn't want to be the next deer in that set of headlights, but he is choosing.
Even here,
There's some tension. A little bit of "I will not think too hard"
And it ends badly, as these things do.
And ultimately, there's a kind of clear-eyed forgiveness, conveyed completely wordlessly, just by Gerald's presence in the later scenes, a sort of Yes, this is her and Yes, this is me, and no other end was ever possible, and it's nobody's fault.
He never hates her, so we never hate her. Want to smack her, yes, but we never hate her.
Made me think of Yeats' No Second Troy:
"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
...
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?"
All this, and I swear: I think he has 20 lines.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-07-30 12:11 pm (UTC)I don't have a single thing to add. Just...wow.
Or, conversely, perhaps I have a few *hours'* worth of things to add, but can't distill it down to anything that would make sense here.
Your analysis *and* your ability to communicate it are amazing.
I could fall hard for a mind like yours. (Oops. Too late.) :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 06:36 pm (UTC)I *squee* with gratitude and pleasure.