Broken Flowers
I borrowed Broken Flowers from the library. It stars the always good Bill Murray and has an R rating in part because of "graphic nudity." Never heard of that. Maybe it's like graphic violence except with nipples showing.
Not Bill Murray's, I hoped.
It stunk. Murray's character Don Johnston gets a letter from a former lover telling him that a 19-year-old son he never knew about is looking for him. The letter is unsigned, the postmark conveniently too faded to read. Don doesn't care to know any more but his detective novelist neighbor is fascinated. He tracks down the addresses of the four possible mothers and cajoles Don into visiting each to discover which one bore his child. With lots of awkward pauses and montages of driving down ordinary streets that inflate a 40-minute story into a nearly two-hour movie, Don sleeps with one ex, gets beat up by the boyfriend of another and eventually comes home with a few clues but no answers. The end. No resolution. All that for nothing.
At least we do not see Bill Murray naked. A young actress named Alexis Dziena provides the "graphic nudity," which appears to mean "five seconds of full frontal." I scanned back and watched again just to be sure. Maybe twice. Even that didn't make the rest of the film worthwhile.
Film critic Richard Roeper named the moment one of the five "most startling nude scenes of the year" for 2005. Here's the list, cribbed from this article:
The Murray reaction shot would be particularly noteworthy since it's highly probable that he was not in the same room when Dziena's birthday suit scene was shot. His reaction would have been shot at another time and edited in later.
Not Bill Murray's, I hoped.
It stunk. Murray's character Don Johnston gets a letter from a former lover telling him that a 19-year-old son he never knew about is looking for him. The letter is unsigned, the postmark conveniently too faded to read. Don doesn't care to know any more but his detective novelist neighbor is fascinated. He tracks down the addresses of the four possible mothers and cajoles Don into visiting each to discover which one bore his child. With lots of awkward pauses and montages of driving down ordinary streets that inflate a 40-minute story into a nearly two-hour movie, Don sleeps with one ex, gets beat up by the boyfriend of another and eventually comes home with a few clues but no answers. The end. No resolution. All that for nothing.
At least we do not see Bill Murray naked. A young actress named Alexis Dziena provides the "graphic nudity," which appears to mean "five seconds of full frontal." I scanned back and watched again just to be sure. Maybe twice. Even that didn't make the rest of the film worthwhile.
Film critic Richard Roeper named the moment one of the five "most startling nude scenes of the year" for 2005. Here's the list, cribbed from this article:
5. Alexis Dziena's Lolita enters a room fully nude while talking on the telephone in "Broken Flowers." If they gave an Oscar for Best Deadpan Reaction Shot, Bill Murray would be the hands-down winner for the look on his face when Dziena walks in.
4. Claire Danes in "Shopgirl." It's not so much that she's naked, but that she's naked for the benefit of Steve Martin.
3. Anne Hathaway in "Brokeback Mountain." Much to the delight of Internet fanboys the world over, the fresh-faced innocent from "The Princess Diaries" movies went topless in a makeout scene with Jake Gyllenhaal.
2. Anne Hathaway in "Havoc." She has three nude scenes in this straight-to-video release.
1. Bob Hoskins in "Mrs. Henderson Presents." The British fireplug did the Full Monty, much to the delight of Internet fanboys --well, not really.
The Murray reaction shot would be particularly noteworthy since it's highly probable that he was not in the same room when Dziena's birthday suit scene was shot. His reaction would have been shot at another time and edited in later.
Labels: Movies
posted by jack at 8:16 PM
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