Beaver Shots

Forget about “balls out” acting, what really impresses me these days are the actresses who bare their bushes, and it’s about time. I’m not talking your average porn star. I mean respected actresses who win prizes at Cannes (although I must admit that line is getting blurred all the time). Let’s take a look at some notable examples of renowned actresses who have exposed their nether regions for art:

A terrific actress and truly beautiful, Julianne Moore proved she was a real red head in Altman’s Short Cuts (1993).

Another fabulous redhead is the great Tilda Swinton in an equally great film Julia (2008). Tilda acts with her boobs and her crotch in this movie and she’s genius. Trust me, see it! Plus she utters probably the best line reading in the past thirty years of cinema, “You! I wouldn’t wipe my ass with you!”

Kate Winslet in Holy Smoke (1999). I love seeing Kate Winslet nude in movies and Jane Campion captures a nice full frontal shot of her young, gorgeously zaftig body in this film that I loved and hardly anyone saw. Kate Winslet is probably the best film actress alive today, and she’s famous for revealing a “less than perfect” body. Of course “less than perfect” means she’s a size 8 as opposed to a size 2, which by Hollywood standards makes her a plus size, which means that I’m really fat.

Isabella Rossellini went from gorgeous lounge goddess draped in a blue velvet gown to emerging from the hedges of a suburban lawn naked, brutally exposed and bruised in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986). Her full frontal reveal was done in a long shot, but it sent shock waves of fascination and repulsion. Lynch later trumped it in with his hot lesbian scene in Mulholland Drive (2001), but for some reason gorgeous brunette actress Laura Harring’s “down there” is digitally scrambled. WTF? I wonder why that decision was made. Ratings perhaps? Who knows, it’s one of the hottest sex scenes ever filmed. Mulholland Drive is a great film, probably my favorite film from the past decade. In fact, I think it’s time for another screening.

Speaking of Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts’ masturbation scene is Oscar worthy for its realism, but the big prize for baring it all, and I mean ALL is Charlotte Gainsborough in Antichirst (2009). I just saw it last week and it’s still fresh in my mind and in my nightmares.
Charlotte Gainsborough looking like a young Patti Smith with a soft voice that is capable of escalating into horrific shrieks is the perfect casting for Von Trier’s twisted fairy tale of a movie. I threw my scarf over my head and closed my eyes during the genital mutilation scenes, but they were wide open during the scene when she’s down on the ground in a forest masturbating completely naked. Whoa! That shocked me just because it was so raw and so real.

I am sure there are other examples, but these are the ones that come to mind. Art cinema will always push the boundaries, and I think it’s about time that sex is depicted truthfully. I don’t know if Antichrist is a great film, but its power to break through a barrier of what can be considered appropriate for cinema versus pornography cannot be denied. I don’t think I will ever want to film what Von Trier does in Antichrist, but his willingness to “go there” encourages me to be bolder in my vision as a filmmaker. And the actresses who also “go there”? Sexuality is part of being human. For an actress to depict that truthfully in the hands of a director’s artistry is an exercise in trust. It’s very interesting to contemplate what separates a Charlotte Gainsborough, looking chic on the red carpet at Cannes and a porn star doing the same thing in Vegas. And while we’re showing it all, why not show the guys’ stuff too. Did Willem Dafoe’s dick double have to belong to a well-endowed porn actor? Couldn’t he just be an average size, or can’t we handle that naked truth yet?

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~ by electriclady on November 4, 2009.