Have you caught Lee Ang’s LUST, CAUTION? Or you’ve probably heard about it in the media anyway. I bet that 90% of the movie-goers who flocked to see it didn’t know exactly what the film is about. But ALL of them will know that there’s sex in the movie, and not just any unknown actor doing it but Tony Leung and a nubile young starlet Tang Wei.
Anyway I won’t blame the movie-goers. All the media hype they’ve heard, read and seen focused mainly on the sex part, or rather, the hoo-ha over the lack of it from the Singapore and China versions.
Coming up next are 2 local films – PLEASURE FACTORY and SOLOS. PLEASURE FACTORY is a movie about our sex workers plying the Geylang lorongs. SOLOS is a local gay film. Maybe they won’t be as hot as LUST, CAUTION but I’m sure once again, the basal instinct will get the better of us. Both should do well enough at the box office. So far in the papers, the focus has been the different kinds of sex one can see in both films – hetero sex, gay sex, oral sex… you get the picture.
Moral of the story? Sex sells. Always will. There’s just something about it we can’t get enough of that we have to see it on the big screen. For the producers & distributors, it’s probably easier to market and to generate publicity as well.
Yes, we should make a movie with a strong sexual theme… MediaCorp Raintree is already doing it. They’re making a movie about a famous stripper in the 1950s & 60s called Rose Chan. Maybe not as racy but the idea of a famous stripper is enough to conjure up “curious” images.
And for the record, we’ve yet to catch LUST, CAUTION. We’re waiting for the R(A) version.
