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| Images courtesy of Unearthed Films |
Renowned British Far from the Madding Crowd cinematographer
turned fully fledged provocateur writer-director Nicolas Roeg remains one of
world cinema’s most underappreciated directors whose extensive but overlooked
oeuvre is only starting to get attention now. While largely known for his three major
masterworks from the 1970s Walkabout, Don’t Look Now and The
Man Who Fell to Earth, the director continued working throughout the 1980s
with his still barb-edged sexually obsessed shockers Bad Timing and Insignificance. While slowly down considerably in the 1990s with
his Jim Henson workshop produced Roald Dahl adaptation The Witches, an
unlikely kids movie from such an adult oriented sexually conscious and daring
director, Roeg started dabbling in television films.
In the same year of 1995 Roeg generated the Michael Gambon
starring theatrical venture Two Deaths, the director also leapt at the
chance to direct an erotic Showtime televised drama as talky chamber piece Full
Body Massage. Recently picked up by
Unearthed Films via a new 2K digital restoration, the late-night cable skin
flick about a free-spirited voluptuously figured nude frolicking art dealer named
Nina (Mimi Rogers) awaiting her weekly Full Body Massage from her young
masseur/lover Douglas (Christopher Burgard) when to her surprise a much older
middle-aged replacement she’s never met named Fitch (Bryan Brown from Cocktail)
is sent in to do the job.
Though tense at first, the two quickly ease into the session
which despite the frequent close-ups of hands squeezing and groping a naked
woman’s body largely becomes an exchange of philosophical conversations about
past relationships and the meaning of love.
Throughout, the film jumps in and out of characters fantasizing about
their past relations with the subtle hint something might happen between these
two. Mostly though, what seemed like another
skin flick from afar, in Roeg’s hands, turns out to be a modern and mature
exchange of ideas where two people fully open up to each other intellectually.
For a movie that features Mimi Rogers naked and being felt
up by numerous male characters who come in and out of the promiscuous sexually
modern Nina’s life, Full Body Massage winds up functioning a bit like a
stripped-down stage play largely concerning two characters from different
worlds merely talking. Akin to films
like Inserts which had a way of mixing sexuality and/or full-frontal
nudity with intellectual discourse about the relationships between life, art
and sex, what’s curious about Roeg’s film as with many others before it is how
he depicts female agency. For a scenario
that would leave most others uncomfortable, Nina is empowered and saucy and at
one point even gets into a heated argument with Fitch who has his own subset of
skeletons in his closet.
Featuring a soft saxophone-oriented jazz score by Harry
Gregson-Williams akin to the contemporary score for Bad Timing, much of
the film is interspersed with Roeg’s close-ups shot exquisitely by Anthony B. Richmond. The director’s trademark use of the zoom lens
and close-ups of the characters with curious, at times deliberately confusing
juxtapositions where we’re not always sure if the characters are acting out
their fantasies or just thinking them, brilliantly edited by Louise
Rubacky. Mostly though, despite having
an ensemble cast of side characters who come in and out of the characters’
lives glimpsed through flashbacks, this is an intimate, passionately acted
chamber piece basically consisting of two actors.
Mimi Rogers, though naked for a majority of the film with a
certain measure of trust in her director, gives one of the most confident and
brave performances as a sophisticated modern woman who in the past has engaged
in a series of relationships but finds herself in a curious, unlikely position
of friendship with her new masseur. Bryan
Brown more or less reprises his role as the huckster bartender Coughlin from Cocktail
playing a somewhat pretentious man with a cacophony of questionable techniques
but watching these rigid, tightly wound-up figures slowly open up to each other
like flowers is kind of sweet in an unlikely way. Whatever energy these two generate in the
one-room set piece of Nina’s modern home, it is palpable and can be cut with a
knife.
A surprisingly thoughtful discussion piece through the lens
of erotica and softcore pornography, Full Body Massage while a lesser
known or regarded Nicolas Roeg effort nevertheless does display the director
still working to the edge of his fears, doubts and inspirations. Any other director would’ve simply turned
over a Red Shoe Diaries movie but in Roeg’s hands he asks us to think
like mature adults about the ideas his two characters are exchanging. Also just a really well acted drama with two
fearless actors giving pitch perfect performances, Full Body Massage shows
the director working on a smaller scale but never losing sight of his desire to
provoke and enrich discourse on the nature of human sexuality. Though Unearthed Films’ blu-ray housed in a
nice slipcover could’ve included more extras, the 2K scan looks nice and kudos
to the boutique label for bringing this largely unseen, clandestine Roeg effort
to home media for Roeg-philes to digest and enjoy.
--Andrew Kotwicki
