IT SHOULDn’T HAPPEN TO A FILM jOURNALIST
Jamie on watching sex scenes (in movies, that is).
Film-watching is often about escapism: we sit ourselves down to forget, for two blissful hours, the discomfits or tedium of our own day-to-day existence. Thus someone or something infringing on my small patch of pleasure royally pisses me off.
Often it is rude, selfish prats opting to talk or text, but I’ve discussed that particular annoyance previously, so let’s not make my blood boil again. Instead, for the hell of it, here are five film viewings that rapidly devolved from pleasure to pain, for various reasons.
Terror threat
Watching Pascal Laugier’s antitorture porn masterpiece Martyrs at FrightFest 2008, I was already cowering at the sight of the bound heroine being ritualistically beaten by a big, bald bloke with bulging biceps, when the guy doing the oh-so-clinical beating sat down in the empty seat next to me and stayed there for the remainder of the movie. Being an avid viewer of horror movies since I was eight, not many get under my skin these days; Martyrs already had, so watching the last act in the shadow of his tremendous bulk was all-but unbearable.
Limited viewing
Here’s a little-known fact about the world’s most deluxe film festival, Cannes – one of its two especially prized cinemas, Théâtre Debussy, where premieres of world-cinema masterpieces take place, has a corner block of seating with restricted views, meaning you can see only jutting speakers where a chunk of screen should be. And so it is that to this day I have only seen two-thirds of Steve McQueen’s Hunger, not because I arrived late or left early, but because 30 per cent of the screen was totally obscured. Infuriating.
Friend or foe?
One of the major film studios often invites me to private screenings of movies to get my feedback if it’s a film they’re not sure how to promote. But here’s the rub – after making me feel oh-sospecial by putting on a screening just for me, they always relieve me of my phone and assign a security guard to watch me watching the movie in order to protect against piracy. It’s bad enough not feeling trusted. It’s worse that the security guard always sits directly behind me and I can feel his eyes burning into the back of my head.
Cock-up
“Are you going to any screenings this week? Can you take the work experience girl?” asked my theneditor back in 2011. “Sure, I’m seeing Shame tonight,” I replied, not thinking it through. So there we were, sitting in the front row of an intimate screening room, when, a few minutes in, Michael Fassbender’s mondo manhood smacked us right in the face. Then came the angry – nay, furious – sex, the Fass grunting and gurning like a boar snuffling for truffles. When we left, my guest had tears trickling down her cheeks, though she assured me it was down to the naked pain on show, not the aggressive rutting. Hmmm.
Carpet burn
But as most of us know, there isn’t a cringe-watch invented that can rival that first time you grimace through a sex scene with your parents. I was 11, lying on the living-room floor with my chin cupped in my hands, watching the version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover that stars Emmanuelle’s Sylvia Kristel – you know, the saucy one. And then it happened: lost in the realm of the senses, my spell was shattered by my mum crying, “Jamie, stop gyrating on the carpet!” Oh, and did I mention the neighbours were over? It was the most excruciating viewing experience of my life. And on that note of over-sharing, I’ll get my coat.
‘michael fassbender’s mondo manhood smacked us right in the face…’