Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (1975) is the one about George (Warren Beatty, co-writer and producer of the film), a self-absorbed hairdresser who fornicates with a lot of women, including the wife, the daughter and the mistress of an unsuspecting millionaire (Jack Warden)!

A seriocomic, less than credible loser is what this is, since, for one thing, who knows why the women acted by Julie Christie, Lee Grant and Goldie Hawn are so gaga over handsome but dull George?  For another, the film has a political dimension, but Beatty and Ashby understand nothing about . . . well, politics.  Here, sexual hedonists, especially prosperous ones, allowed Richard Nixon to gain the White House in 1968, or saw to it that he did.  That is, they were less concerned about the country than about their own pleasure and satisfaction and material privilege.

A fatuous message.

Cover of Shampoo

No doubt about it:  South Korea’s Chunhyang wins the award for Best Depiction of Connubial Love in 2000 and even preceding years.  Adoration, sexual play, and sexual lovemaking between husband and wife—Chunhyang and Mongryong—are all over the first hour, as is a Korean singer’s partial narration of the film’s tale in song (and it’s sung before a modern-day audience shown in the movie).

Figures of the 18th century, Chunhyang is a courtesan’s daughter and Mongryong a governor’s son, and they marry anyway.  The narrative is not that interesting, although it isn’t boring either.  The life of the film is in the visuals, in Im Kwon Taek’s directorial choices.  For instance, when the married pair have to part for a long while, Mongryong, ready to leave, gazes in a closeup at his cherished wife.  But instead of getting the expected closeup of Chunhyang, the camera simply cuts to a medium shot with the cherished wife still in the background, and she shows Mongryong the skirt, or whatever it’s called, on which he once wrote a pledge of fidelity.  A smart move, this.

The exquisite Chunhyang also offers such shots as that of a single pink rose in a pond of sparse lily pads and that of  Chunhyang swinging back and forth among forest trees in a scene Watteau would have envied.  Moreover, there is a honeymoon sequence with Mongryong removing layers of timid Chunhyang’s clothes in what plays like a calisthenics of nigh amusing sensuality.  And the nudity isn’t gratuitous.  The first Korean film I saw, Im Kwon Taek’s achievement is one of the few cinematic gems of 2000.

(In Korean with English subtitles.)

Chunhyang (2000 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957) provides us with various levels of content.  First, it is the story of a dissatisfied, certainly unloved prostitute (Giulietta Masina, masterly).  Second, it is an unprofound but appealing portrait of life in 1950s Italy.  Third, it presents Fellini inching toward what is to me religious or transcendent truth, albeit it is inconclusive about it.

Truth to tell, however, any religious theme in Cabiria is not quite as interesting as the prostitute’s being victimized by the diverse appetites, not always sexual, of men.  But there is a remarkable contrast between these self-seeking men and the peregrine gent who helps destitute individuals living in caves (life in 1950s Italy?)  That is, not all the men in the film are scoundrels.

Cabiria on the streets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When do the tastes of other people dictate too much?  Director-scenarist-actor Agnes Jaoui and scenarist-actor Jean-Pierre Bacri, in The Taste of Others (2000), have some idea.  When they’re not expressing this idea, they are at any rate contemplating when the tastes of others dictate a great deal.

The subject of taste is extensively covered in this French production, and included is the amatory taste in, or for, people: the desire of others.  A married businessman desires his English-language tutor, a 40-year-old stage actress named Clara.  The tastes of his interior decorator wife, who has arranged that the couple live in a “candy dish” home, leave the businessman cold.  Beau-less Clara refuses to reciprocate but, not getting any younger for her audiences, is gradually tempted.  There is a hole at the center of her existence.  Likewise with a chauffeur called Bruno, who is discarded by his faraway girlfriend on whom he has cheated, anyway.  Tastes at cross purposes.

The married businessman’s bodyguard, Frank, falls for a pretty barmaid with a taste for both selling and using illegal drugs and for fornication.  Ex-policeman Frank will accept the latter but not the former.  The thought of conventional married life appeals to the pair, but do they really have a taste for it?   We know what demands Frank will be making of the barmaid.

The film has much to do with transience.  Because of the taste of others, transience arises.  Clara’s acting career is slowly evaporating.  The businessman’s marriage gets upended.  And so on.  Life with its transience, however, must go on.  To the self-centered interior decorator, Bruno mutters, “The world is what it is,” and since this woman insists on wearing blinders—notice how indifferent she is to owning a dog that nips at people—Bruno adds that she ought to go live in Disneyland.  Disneyland is the equivalent of a candy-dish home.

I was delighted that this acclaimed comedy-drama arrived and did relatively well in Tulsa . . .

Cover of The Taste of Others [Region 2]

The old screwball comedies were not always funny, but were still worth watching for their interesting plots.  Such is the case with a late screwball comedy—Pillow Talk (1959)—except for the happy fact that this Doris Day-Rock Hudson effort manages to become funny as it goes along.

Assuredly hormones get secreted in the film, and watch out for the free-floating corruption!  (Hudson plays a horndog and Thelma Ritter plays a lush.)

Cover of Pillow Talk