The Loss of Sexual Innocence
The Loss of Sexual Innocence
R | 29 April 1999 (USA)
The Loss of Sexual Innocence Trailers

The story of the sexual development of a filmmaker through three stages of his life.

Reviews
Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible
SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
fedor8 The only thing that makes this painstakingly slow and utterly incomprehensible movie possible to finish in one go is the soundtrack. Otherwise, it's pretty much a typically European pretentious mess.Absolutely nothing connects to anything, at least not in a reasonable, valid or sufficient manner. Many characters, about which we find out almost nothing, are supposedly connected - but only the director knows how (and even that's questionable, since he was obviously on drugs).The dialogues are as scarce as I've seen anywhere before: this certainly doesn't help in clarifying things. The scenes with the black man and white woman playing Adam and Eve (so PC), and their subsequent exile from Eden by police with helicopters is straight out of Monty Python, except that this is a deadly serious pretentious drama and not a spoof.Is there anyone who can watch that scene in which Adam and Eve urinate (we are actually shown the urine leaving the top of his penis), and take that scene seriously? Most of the cast look like they walked straight out of a New York fashion show, and this cheapens the look of the movie substantially. Lars von Trier and his 95-ers must love this garbage.
moviegoingcat I really don't like giving this film a numerical rating. It strikes me as an experiment that has and will cause some viewers to think things that Figgis might not be happy to hear about. His film "Liebestraum" is one of my favorites, but he might find my interpretations of that one quite odd. So what I have here are a list of ideas which I think are suggested by parts of the film. As one reviewer here said, this is not a film about sex. The sex and the title are there to drag people in and to keep some of them watching. Parts of the film are certainly straightforward enough as in the case of little Figgis being treated horribly in a modern 'civilized' school gymnasium setting. The description of primitive people and how they trained (or still train..) their children to be killers and cannibals when it comes to members of other tribes that comes before the school sequence certainly tells you what's going on. Civilization hasn't come very far. However, apologists for both the cannibal tribe and the 'war on obesity'might have to think the 'apologies' over. (unless they are hopeless) When it comes to animals..the human one is one of the really low ones, especially when it's part of a group or a tribe. Of course the scenes with the characters most reviewers call Adam and Eve do in the end suggest South Africa during the apartheid period. The police and guns and dogs. The twins..are an easy part. However, not all twins are happy to be twins. (And certain cultures view twins in very vicious tribal ways..) The sequence in the desert could give a viewer something to think about when someone comes around asking for donations for starving desert tribes who wear turbans and paint themselves blue. The tribe kills the woman, one of the twins,because she offered to stay behind while the others involved in the 'accident' drove to notify the police. A child who should not have been running alone in the desert was killed by the reckless driving of a western man incapable of much thought. He's no better than the jerks who laugh at the incident involving the blind woman's seeing eye dog earlier in the film. There too the twin tries to help and is hit at by the blind woman trying to fend off the dogs in heat and maybe their counterparts. The twin is innocent but the members of the tribe think in numbers. They are incapable of any of the nuances human beings should after all this time be capable of. The reckless driver gets off free and is happy to leave the woman behind. Her boyfriend is a little upset. Of course we don't know who played the tribe in the desert... It's a nicely cynical piece of work. Sex is the least interesting thing in the movie. (This is from june of 'joejune'.)
Craig Franklin Films like this are the reason that independent film often gets such a bad rap. It's a messy, sloppy series of images which have very little relationship with each other, slapped together with some "biblical imagery" which is about as subtle as getting shot from point blank range with a shotgun, and with some of the most obnoxious, pretentious classical piano music lathered all over the top of everything.The allegory is heavier than a copy of "A short guide to the Australian Taxation system", but despite the woeful film-making, this might have been tolerable if it weren't for acting. Not that I blame most of the actors, who don't seem to really want to be there, for the depths this movie plummets to, but when there's only about ten minutes of dialogue, you need to do better than a vaguely disinterested performance to make something of a film. As it is, the performances mean that it's very difficult to draw any links between the characters, or anything at all that's going on. This reduces the film to a series of disconnected scenes and shots, which will leave most viewers wondering what exactly is supposed to be going on.I'm not even going to go into the pervasive nudity and the like, which has seemingly been added simply for the sake of having some pervasive nudity in the film. I'm no fundamentalist wowser, but if you're going to do things like that, please at least have a point to it.Essentially though, this film is pretentious art for the sake of making a pretentious art film. This does not translate into a film that is worth watching at all. Avoid.
rpviking ...Cathartic. Personal. Visceral. Human. Tense. Motivated movement. Deliberate, careful pace. Reactive. Hated or Loved. Transcendental.Not everyone will like this film. I'll venture further to say a lot of people will not like it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a chance. If you like to look at beautiful art in a museum, everything from modern art to the more traditional painterly forms, see this film. If Miles Davis' Bitches Brew speaks to you, you have the capacity to enjoy this film. If you like films that highly affect you, see this one. However, if you are looking for something with a plain, spoon-fed storyline and theme, this is not for you. Or if you don't want to think (you just want to be numbly entertained), go see something else. But to dismiss it for any other reason or to walk out of it before it is over, is a travesty. Give it the benefit of the doubt. Let it say its piece. Like all great works of art, you have to look at it as a whole.The Loss of Sexual Innocence is a bold-faced rebellion against the way people normally appreciate films. It challenges you to feel deeply and search for meanings, just as we do in everyday life; just as it is our nature to do. This film is what you get from it. It is how you see it and interpret it. One person looks at a Velazquez painting and sees an old woman cooking. Another person looks at the same painting and sees the realism of the two fish on the plate and the translucent quality of the raw egg in the soup. And yet another person sees or feels the emotion on the woman's face, empathizing with her. Figgis' film has that capacity. Look at it with those kind of eyes; open-minded. Go with the feelings that it stirs up in you, whatever they may be. Search these feelings out, even after the film is over. A strong reaction from the see-er is the true artist's goal.It is exciting to have a film like this from Mike Figgis. After his more mainstream and widely accepted Leaving Las Vegas, this is a healthy validation for him. The Loss... is masterfully crafted. Every detail and brush-stroke is intentional and utterly important. It plays like a symphony to the senses with both visual and 'audial' recapitulations and cadences; an experience that stays with you.
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