Eros

Plot synopsis:
The Hand
Miss Hua, a 1960s high-end call girl is visited by a shy dressmaker's assistant Zhang, to take her measure. He hears the sounds of sex, as he waits in her living room. He is drawn towards her but there is no meeting ground between the two individuals from completely different classes. She summons him when her client leaves. She tells him, she will supply him with an aid to his memory. He will think about her while designing her clothes, she says.
Equilibrium
Nick Penrose is an advertising executive under enormous pressure at work. He tells his psychiatrist Dr Pearl about a recurring dream of a beautiful naked woman in his apartment, as they discuss the possible reasons why his stress seems to manifest itself in the erotic dream.
The Dangerous Thread of Things
A bored couple, Christopher and Cloe, take a stroll near a resort on a lake on the coast of Tuscany. Visiting a restaurant on the beach, they see a sexy young woman, Linda. Cloe tells him where she lives, inside a crumbling medieval tower. He goes to visit her and they have sex. As Christopher leaves the place, the two women later encounter each other on the beach, both naked.

Tags: pornographic

Review:
Most seem to think that none of it is erotic enough and few "like" the Soderbergh and Antonioni projects.But you, dear viewer, you will know this as three explorations into how the eye creates the seductive impulse.
The Tale Tail And Wong Kar-Wai. Antonioni is not able to direct a 30 min film.
The Dangerous Thread of Things deals with a couple trapped in a plain, tasteless life that are no longer able to observe, to feel, to digest the little, happy, natural elements of their lives.What Antonioni wants to show here is that women are passionate, wild , instinctual.
The ideas are nice, he tried to do something great , but he didn't manage because there was not enough time to construct the characters, to make them mean something so by the end of the film we are left with a feeling of dizziness.On the other hand, i didn't like Soderbergh's segment at all maybe because i didn't understand it or maybe I'm trying to get in deep where there is only the surface.Anyway, Kar-Wai's segment was the best of all three, absolutely wonderful.
The story is rather sad(all Kar Wai's characters are melancholic) but the way he works with the camera and the music perfectly combined with the images proves what a great director he is.
In the order of appearance:"The Hand" by Wong Kar-Wai is a solid piece of film-making, but nothing special.
We've seen these characters before, they are not that interesting, and the story itself veers too far into melodramatic to my liking."Equilibrium" by Soderbergh is a witty, clever little nugget...
and you won't soon forget an unorthodox shrink who indulges in a bit of voyerism on the side while treating his twitchy patient (a great appearance by Robert Downey Jr.)The Whatever It Was Called by Antonioni is so bad, I could not believe my eyes.
"Eros" (2004) is the collection of three short films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (segment "Il filo pericoloso delle cose"), Steven Soderbergh (segment "Equilibrium") , and Kar Wai Wong (segment "The Hand").
My favorite is "The Hand"  a sensual, emotional, powerful and very sad story about a young tailor who put the years of unrequited love for a beautiful call girl in an exquisite dress he created for her.
It is a brilliant work of art from one of the greatest working directors now.Steven Soderbergh's "Equilibrium" is a funny duet between two excellent actors, Alan Arkin as a voyeuristic shrink and Robert Downey Jr. as his patient who has a reoccurring dream about a beautiful woman.Michelangelo Antonioni's segment "Il filo pericoloso delle cose" aka "The Dangerous Thread of Things" has been called the weakest in the trio.
Wong Kar Wai delivers a touching, sad romantic tale of a tailor's apprentice who has a curiosity about a woman who does something erotic with him on a first visit (hence the title of the segment, The Hand, though it's not as pat a term as might be imagined.
It goes to show that Kar-Wai might be the most skilled at making romantic-dramas in China, or at least is the most popular.Steven Soderbergh, likely around the time he directed the slightly off-putting Ocean's Twelve, concocted this sort of comedy of manners, as he says, "so I could have my name on a poster with Antonioni." It stars Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin as a salesman and a psychiatrist respectively, and Downey's character is anxious about his job and, more importantly, about a woman in his dream.
But his physical mannerisms, as Downey goes through his dream to confront himself (filmed in nice black and white, by the way), makes the scene all the more worthwhile.
With the brilliance of the three directors one would expect far more than the film delivers.Wong Kar Wai presents the strongest of the three films in a dark story about a tailor who sublimates his desire for a courtesan (Gong Li) by making clothes for her - a 'servant' who finally reverses his role.
The photography and interweaving of the characters is very beautiful to experience.Steven Soderberg makes a testy little script about an ad man (Robert Downey, Jr) in therapy with a bizarre psychiatrist (Alan Arkin) exploring a recurring sensual dream.
Shot is black and white the actors give it their all but the story is silly and becomes boring with all the distractions Soderberg works into the weak plot.Antonioni attempts to breathe life into the old Italian movies of lover's spats and diversions and comes up with what feels like a script-less little mess of a movie bent solely on see-through blouses and nude cavorting on beaches.As a triptych the film just doesn't become airborne, despite some very high powered, first rate directors.
I saw this movie last night at the Elgin Theatre at the Toronto International Film Festival and people walked out after seeing the Wong Kar Wai and Steven Soderbergh segments.
First, there was Wong Kar Wai's short film, titled "The Hand", starring Gong Li and Chang Chen.
Overall, I'd say this movie was a 7/10 mainly because Wong Kar Wai and Steven Soderbergh pulled the average up..
For fans of Wong Kar-Wai, his segment "The Hands" is a must-see, as it ranks among his best, most fully-realized works.
Soderbergh's piece, titled "Equilibrium", is a tediously self-conscious exercise in cerebral cleverness, typical of his attempts at uncommercial "art" film-making (as opposed to his usual faceless Hollywood products).
It only further proves what a truly cold, soulless filmmaker Soderbergh is that his segment of an anthology film supposedly based around the theme of sex is completely devoid of sensuality of any kind.
Antonioni's closing segment (baring the appropriately pretentious title "The Dangerous Thread of Things") fairs slightly better, but not enough to prevent it from being a sad near self-parody from what was once one of cinema's leading lights.
It is tempting to blame Antonioni's stroke (which rendered him wheelchair-bound and mute in 1985) for his piece's dirty old man sensibility (parts of it approach bad soft-core porn), but even that doesn't excuse the film's sheer almost laughable (if it weren't so tragic) pretentiousness.
I saw this movie at the Toronto Film Festival, on the suggestion of friends who were very excited about Wong Kar Wai's short in particular.
I had never seen anything by that director, but I was interested enough in the concept of the movie (three short films by three directors of different nationality) to go along.The first short, Wong's 'The Hand', is excellent; it is touching and powerful.
I enjoyed this enough to want to see more of the director's work.The second is Steven Soderbergh's 'Equilibrium', and it's the sort of film that I sometimes think the West has forgotten how to make.
This is a shocking combination of bad acting, pointless storytelling, and unnecessary nudity...and this is not just my opinion; by about halfway through, most of the audience was laughing with embarrassment and more than a few were leaving the theatre.So, in conclusion, Eros is a film of contrasts: two excellent pieces of cinema and one piece of garbage.
If you like the work of Wong or Soderbergh, I highly recommend this film.
Eros is a collection of three such films, ostensibly sharing a similar theme.Wong Kar Wai's "The Hand" is the first film, and is a premiere example of what a short film can achieve.
It is by far the best film of the bunch, perhaps even one of the director's finest.Steven Soderbergh's "Equilibrium" is the second film in the trio, and features a few shots of a naked woman and a long and unrelated dialog between Robert Downey Jr and Alan Arkin.
Soderbergh, who's often hit-or-miss, misses big time with this convoluted short.Michelangelo Antonioni's "Dangerous thread" (or however it is properly translated) is quite different from the previous two films.
It actually feels like it is much closer to succeeding than "Equilibrium", if only because it seems to fit comfortably within its time constraints, but the vacuous plot leaves you bored.In the end Eros is a missed opportunity.
I saw this film in Greece where the sequence is: Antonioni, Sodenberg, Kar Wai. The Antonioni film felt a bit indifferent but one has only to pay attention to some details to understand that this is a work of a genius like Antonioni who has great fun.
This isn't bad, its just not the best way to view the two good films of the set.Ultimately I'd say if you're interested in any of the directors give it a shot, or more precisely the first two are worth renting or seeing on cable, while the final film should simply be burned.
The three stories are the views that Michelangelo Antonioni, Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar-Wai have of eroticism, and in two of them the segments are what one would expect of their creators, confirming the auteurist film theory.
The final section , Wong's "The Hand", based on the tale "The Twilight of the Bottom Dancer" (according to the director in an interview), illustrates the generalized (or maybe "cliched" would be a more appropriate adjective) notions of what the artistic approach to eroticism should be (for example, the tailor introducing his hand in a dress), but Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle are remarkable image-makers, and Gong Li and Chang Chen give very good performances, that I guess that for a modern moviegoer this must be the best segment.
The first short The Hand by Wong Kar Wai is in his classic style portrayal of melancholic love and eroticism, easily the best of the three.
3 shorts, 3 directors, 3 stories, 3 cultures, 3 streams of consciousness, 1 theme - loveI guess the story between Wong Kar Wai & Gong Li, although dark and sad, hits the bulls eye.
To make this movie's critic,composed by three shorts,I will make three critics about the three segments.The hand-Directed by Wong Kar Wai-Rating:9/10 I never was a Wong Kar Wai's fan.I think that Happy together is a bad pretentious movie.But his short on this movie,The hand,is simply great.The dialogs and the story are really well and it is the best short of the movie.The short does not focus in much sex scenes.There are only some.The short is more focused to dialogs,to characters and to the story.Equilibrium-Directed by Steven Soderbergh-Rating:6/10 Equilibrium is a fun,but mediocre short.Steven Soderbergh continues with his irregular career.Robert Downey Jr and Alan Arkin made very good performances.Equilibrium is for having a good time and nothing else.Il filo pericoloso delle cose-Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni-Rating:2/10 I always considered Michelangelo Antonioni as a master in movies.Well,I considered him a master until I saw his short in this movie Eros.I cannot believe that Antonioni was behind this short.It is almost all the time sex scenes without a sense.I think that Antonioni is very old for directing something.Antonioni's short was simply pathetic..
But sadly it wasn't any of these things.There were a few redeeming features - the first short was beautiful to watch and the actors were well chosen, the second had some bits of wonderful acting and interesting photography, and...um...for the third, only the location was interesting.In the end, don't believe the "plot summary" on this site, or the description on the DVD.
All three improvise transcendence.The structure of the thing we can attribute to our conventional film culture that always waxes vaguely about the abstract (Antonioni), treats narrative engineering as a subject of dry, academic discourse (Soderbergh), and is generally more comfortable to evaluate memories of beauty and touch (Wong Kar Wai).I am going to write about these last to first, which is also how they resonated with me.The last segment is typical Kar Wai/Doyle fashion, unfolding down the corner from In the Mood for Love; so flowery, arrested breathing, quietly exasperated romance with the musky scents of intimacy in close quarters.
Soderbergh's is cute and funny, but more like a long joke than a film, and is about as "erotic" as watching Seinfeld.
The ADR on his piece is also very poor, and the acting not much better.8/10 for Wai's, 6/10 for Soderbergh's, and 3/10 for Antonioni's.
I just watched the film today, and can't help thinking that Almodovar (who did the linking segments in between the films) would have formed a more perfect EROS trio with WKW and Antonioni.Soderbergh's Equilibrium was the flimsiest and weakest short of the three for me, which was unfortunately compounded by the fact that it was wedged between WKW and Antonioni's contributions.To follow right after the sumptuous, poetic beauty of Doyle's cinematography and WKW's direction only worked to emphasize the lack of richness in the visuals as well as characters of Equilibrium.
Ele Keats in the erotic "dream" sequence in Equilibrium failed to conjure up an authentic sense of eroticism and depth, unlike Gong Li's character Hua, and like the rest of film, seemed flat in comparison.As for Antonioni, in what could very well be his last film, the sense of anticipation by the audience could have also created a lack of patience with the obviousness of Soderbergh's play between dream vs.
reality, and also his mockery of psychologists/the psychoanalytic "talking cure" or therapy process.Like many of his best, Antonioni's short is a deceptively 'simple' film that suggests something deeper: the understanding of love/eros from the perspective of free-spirited women.
In a recent Taiwanese TV interview, WKW commented that the reason for any director in his 90s and not in the best physical capacity to want to still make a film would be to satisfy a desire, a love - perhaps this is precisely the eros in the world of film-making that is ultimately portrayed by these directors in the eponymous production.On the level of ambition and theme, however, Antonioni is still in his element.
His admirers of choice were Wong Kar Wai, Hong Kong's master of mood and unrequited romance ("In the Mood for Love," "Days of Being Wild") and Indie-darling-turned Hollywood-heavyweight Steven Soderbergh ("King of the Hill," "Ocean's 12").When assembling a trilogy film, rule of thumb generally centers the weaker of the three passages while saving the best for last.
Co-scripted by lifelong collaborator Tonino Guerra ("L'Avventura," "Blowup"), "The Dangerous Thread of Things" has been described as a "mental adventure." Carlo di Carlo, curator of Italy's Antonioni museum, says, "Antonioni wonders: is a film born first in response to an intimate need of its author or are the images destined to have a value - ontologically - for what they are?" A brilliant notion (would one expect anything less of the director?), but given the allotted time, were it not for Mr. Carlo's guidance, I never would have been aware of this concept.An American and his Italian wife are so bored with each other that they barely notice the beauty of Antonioni's surrounding landscapes.
A beautiful young girl enters the picture, the plot vanishes and we spend the rest of the time focusing on textures both man-made and of the flesh.Wong Kar Wai's opening salvo is so powerful that it dwarfs everything that follows.
You don't mind, do you?" When it comes to suppressing emotion and establishing mood through style, no one at work today can top Wong Kar Wai.Anyone who saw "In the Mood for Love" knows that these characters don't stand a chance at happiness, but plot is not the point.
Only I discern the infinite passion, and the pain, of finite hearts that yearn." – Robert Browning"There are no sexual relations." – Jacques Lacan "Paint not the thing, but the effect it produces." - Mallarmé "Eros" is comprised of three short films, one by director Wong Kar-Wai, one by director Steven Soderbergh and one by Michelangelo Antonioni.
The meta-story here, though, is of Soderbergh and Wong's love for Antonioni, whom both cite as an influence and inspiration.Unsurprisingly, Antonioni's contribution to "Eros", "The Dangerous Thread of Things", is the most interesting film of the bunch.
Even Antonioni's deathbed works posses an invisible power which few directors can replicate.7.5/10 – This review has focused on Antonioni's instalment, but Wong Kar-Wai's short film is also quite good.
'Eros' brings together three very different filmmakers, who are telling us, each in his own way, stories about love/lust/desire/dreams.The first segment (The Hand) is made by Wong Kar -Wai, with Christopher Doyle as cinematographer.
The apprentice remains attached to her down to the end and puts all his erotic desire in creating a dress that substitutes for him the woman.Let's pass now to the second segment (Equilibrium), created by Steven Soderbergh.
Or the other way around :) As for the third segment (Il filo pericoloso delle cose - The Dangerous Thread of Things), made by Michelangelo Antonioni, it was considered by many reviewers as the weakest part of the movie.
The Hand--I've only seen "In the Mood for Love" and "2046" by Wong Kar-Wai, and this movie fits in well with both of them.
Wong Kar Wai seems particular possessed with the idea of "Eros" as unrequited love...
in all three of these movies exists two characters that love each other but cannot consummate it, in the latter two (2046 and this short film) the female sexually open but not entirely open to the true love of the male.Equilibrium--Steven Soderbergh takes Eros a little psychologically as a man describes a recurring dream to a distracted psychologist.
The two women meet at the end, and are set at stark contrast to the male-driven symbols of eros from the rest of the short and the previous two shorts.All in all, the three films are interesting and at times beautiful, though they are very different from each other.
This is true with me as well--for some reason, I just like Antonioni's film better than the others.
Eros collects three short films by three talented directors.
Each story raises some issues and makes some points about the romantic relationships shared by women and men, but there is only one brief sex scene.The first segment, THE HAND, is an accomplishment in short film-making.