for your pleasure

there was something very misleading about the opening sex scene in craig brewer's latest film 'black snake moan'. i use the word sex because the two characters rae (christina ricci) and ronnie (justin timberlake) are not engaging in something that looks like romantic love or the usual sugarcoated love scene in a movie. it's not tender or delicate. it's fast, quick, hard, and hot. the tawdry trailers for the film alluded to such a delightful tone of the opening scene, so it wasn't the sex or the way the characters were having sex that bothered me. this could have been the entire film and i would have been satisified. it was inspired and it was convincing. america's prized pinup pop star (j. timberlake) laboriously tries to convinces us yet again that he is a sexual being. some critics dismiss his music as desperate attempts to make us believe that he is indeed not a tweeny former boybander with an aversion to the perverse and an inclination towards syrupy lyircal imagery and adolescent musings. well, those critics are stupid because the genius of justin timberlake, or part of it, is his ability to recognize his babyface looks and marry it with an uncompromising carnal lust. although he may not look like he could beat you up, he probably could have sex with your girlfriend and she report that he was sweet but naughty. he brought sexy back, so he should know what he's talking about, right? we finally see what he always talks about in music and he's doing it with a former child star whose cherubic features consistently belies her more edgier roles in film. there's something off putting about those moonpie eyes and that doll-like combination of thin lips and expansive forehead, but it pulls us in to great effect in such films as 'the ice storm', 'the opposite of sex', and 'buffalo 66'. tarted up as your classic poor white trash whore, you think for a second this is what justin and britney must have looked like, but that's only a thought for the truly pop culture obsessed. at any regard, the opening scene is brilliantly executed in style and wit with the only wish that it could have been a little bit longer. rae looks like she is enjoying the sex, but throughout the rest of the film her pleasure becomes less of a principle and more of a joke or subject to abolishment and that is the main failure of 'black snake moan'.

it's almost perverse, but ultimately entertaining to watch ricci in her most committed performance in years. i laughed with great pleasure at the sight of ricci so righteously and powerfully throw her middle finger up in the air to an obnoxious truck driver who could not phyiscal pass her and her sexual swagger on a country road. clad in wrinkly cowboy boots, cut off t-shirt, and hot pants she is the town slut dammit and we hear her roar. perhaps she is years ahead of her small minded little town where women can have sex not only with the likes of justin timberlake, but with any man and as many as she can pleases. however, as hollywood so often tells us, if she likes sex too much she has to be punished. rae is nearly raped, but instead beaten after insulting the shortcumings of a prospective partner. she is punished for being vocal and sexual, two things women should not be or so the movies tell us. left for the side of the road, rae will endure a unique journey for the rest of the film where her "ways" are to be cured by a mysterious black man. maybe brewer's possible self-awareness with his subject matter makes him smarter than we think, but to literally impair a nymphomaniac with an obvious phallic symbol is either some maxim magazine reader's wet dream or pure fellini-esque in its self-aware male fantasy of the opposite sex.

the set up and look of the film call to mind those great pam grier movies in the 1970s where the audience saw grier usually sexually humiliated or degraded, but in the end she used it as a source of empowerment and not shame and kicked ass before the credits rolled. this is not the case for rae. we are asked to watch the newly frail actress try to mobilize herself with a 40lb chain wrapped around her near naked body for the majority of the film. carted around like a mule, lazarus (samuel l. jackson) is only kind enough to allow her to use the bathroom or get out and go for a walk but only with his hands on her massive leash. how are we to react to this? the humor is less funny and the intelligence less apparent. it takes a magical negro (a fixture in american cinema and literature) to cure this poor white woman of her sexual ways. the film's over simplified analysis of female sexuality becomes evident when rae goes into fits of uncontrollable lust and we see the catalyst for her sexual promiscousity. rae is a nymphomaniac because her father figure seuxally abused her as a child. this is not to mock or say that this is usually not the cause for the sexual behavior of many, but it's the film's only reason why rae is the way she is. it's trite and overused. i was more concerned with how rae/ricci was going to deal with those bruise marks than learning why she craves sex. it's almost a given that her need for sex comes from an unhealthy place, but pyschology and philosophy are not brewer's strong suits. brewer's films are specific in the world he creates, but they are often so lovingly created that they seem otherwordly and cartoony. they are not complex and substantive, but his use of gifted actors suggest there is something beneath the seedy surface of his southern gothic world of sin and redemption. ricci's ability to convey vulnerability and pain is affecting, but contradicts her characters simple background. rae cannot enjoy sex until a man helps her realize that a man is the cause of all her problems. to further assist in ridding her of her "disease", lazarus encourages her to marry her beloved ronnie. rae can now become a member of the right and civilized world where her marriage will establish her as normal and less of a freak.

as sexuality becomes more fluid in the 21st century, the mores and values should be changing as well. rae should not have to marry to validate herself as a person. she should be able to fuck justin timberlake all day and any day. if she chooses to have multiple partners, isn't that her choice? this may sound like we're moving into a time where love and sex have no weight, but when a film about an eldlery black man chaining a nearly naked white woman to his radiator to cure her of her desire to have sex is a choice at the multiplexes, then maybe this thin slice of entertainment is a more revealing look at what we value and deemed watchable in our culture. well, maybe not as revealing as christina ricci's naked breasts.