Three great directors--Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh, Michelangelo Antonioni--make three short movies about erotic love, an anthology film called "Eros." Sounds arty and entertaining, the kind of project any self-respecting cinephile must see, right? Well, no. This dull and ludicrous vanity project is likely to come and go like the wind; firsthand knowledge of "Eros" won't even be useful at dinner parties.
At least the first short, Wong Kar-Wai's "The Hand," has a real narrative arc. A young, inexperienced tailor (Chen Chang) falls in love with a beautiful Hong Kong courtesan (Gong Li). As his career prospers, she falls ill with consumption, and alas, dies. The tailor mourns for his unrequited love. Stilted and clichéd, the fable-like tale simply does not connect at an emotional level.
Chang Chen and Gong Li in Wong Kar-Wai's "The Hand"
Steven Soderbergh lets down fans with a humorous approach to eroticism. "Equilibrium" is so off base, it seems as if the filmmaker had forgotten his subject altogether. Robert Downey Jr plays a 1950's New York ad man who suffers from a series of erotic dreams. During a therapy session with his zany psychiatrist (Alan Arkin), he comes up with the idea for a snooze alarm clock. The short opens with an incongruous sequence featuring a naked woman (Ele Keats) in a bath tub.
Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni wins the distinction of making the worst contribution: "The Dangerous Thread of Things." A rich, middle-aged couple find themselves bored. The woman (Regina Nemni) wears a transparent blouse that reveals her small, but attractive breasts. The husband (Christorpehr Buchholz) has sex with a free spirited big-breasted woman. Later, his wife tends to a pack of horses and then heads to the beach where she inexplicably takes off her clothes and begins to dance on the sand. There she finds the other woman who is also, inexplicably naked and dancing on the beach. The camera compares their nude bodies.
