Human Nature (2001 film)
Human Nature is a 2001 comedy-drama film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry in his directorial debut. The film stars Tim Robbins, Rhys Ifans, Miranda Otto and Patricia Arquette. It was screened out of competition at the 54th Cannes International Film Festival. Plot. Most of the film is told as flashback: Puff (Rhys Ifans) testifies to Congress, Lila Jute (Patricia Arquette) tells her story to the police, while a dead Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins) addresses an unseen audience in the netherworld. Lila is a woman with a rare hormonal imbalance which causes  thick hair to grow all over her body. During her 20s, Lila decides to leave society and live within nature where she feels free to exist comfortably in her natural state. She writes a successful book about her naked, savage, happy, and free life in the woods embracing nature. Then, at age 30, strong sexual desire causes her to return to civilization and have her hair removed in order to find a partner. The partner she finds is Dr. Nathan Bronfman, a psychologist researching the possibility of teaching table manners to mice. Lila and Nathan go hiking in the woods  one day. Lila sights a naked man in the woods who has lived as a wild animal his entire life. Lila discards her clothes and chases him until he's cornered on a tree branch. The man falls off the branch, knocked unconscious. Brought to Nathan's lab, the man is named Puff, after Nathan's French research assistant Gabrielle's (Miranda Otto) childhood dog. We discover later from her phone call to an unknown person that she is actually an American with a fake French accent. First with the help of Gabrielle and later with Lila's help, Nathan  performs conditioned reinforcement training on Puff, inculcating him with a veneer of fine manners and high culture, in spite of which Puff still has difficulty controlling sexual urges. To demonstrate his success, Nathan takes Puff on tour. Puff secretly drinks heavily and patronizes prostitutes. Meanwhile, Nathan and Lila's relationship deteriorates and he is seduced into an affair by a scheming Gabrielle. Eventually Lila decides to take Puff back into the forest to undo his manners training and return him to his natural state. Lila and Puff live naked in the woods together until found by a threatening Nathan, who  is killed by Puff. Lila turns herself in as the murderer and asks Puff to testify on the waywardness of humanity before he returns to his home in the forest. After the reporters and spectators leave, Puff comes back out of the forest and gets into a car with Gabrielle (still with a French accent). They drive off to the city to eat, while Puff looks back thoughtfully at the forest. The ending strongly suggests some unexplained collusion between the two, throwing much of the interpretation of what went on before into question. At the end of the film, there  is a philosophical passage read while the credits appear. It is an excerpt of William of Ockham from "Opera Theologica" in which Ockham explains his theory of intuitive cognition. "Intuitive cognition is such that when some things are cognized, of which one inheres in the other, or one is spatially distant from the other, or exists in some relation to the other, immediately in virtue of that non-propositional cognition of those things, it is known if the thing inheres or does not inhere, if it is spatially distant or not, and the same for other true contingent propositions, unless  that cognition is flawed or there is some impediment." Production. Steven Soderbergh was first interested in directing Charlie Kaufman's script back in late 1996, when Kaufman was still trying to get "Being John Malkovich" produced. Soderbergh's considerations for casting were for David Hyde Pierce in the role of Nathan Bronfman, Chris Kattan in the role of Puff (likely due to his character Mr. Peepers on "Saturday Night Live" at the time), and Marisa Tomei in the role of Lila Jute. He was about to go into pre-production when he was offered "Out of Sight" and after much  deliberation he left the project. Reception. Box office. "Human Nature" has grossed $705,308 in the United States and Canada, and $869,352 in other territories for a worldwide total of 1.6 million, against a production budget of $8.6 million. Critical response. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a score of 49% based on 94 reviews, and an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's consensus reads, "As quirky as "Being John Malkovich" but not as funny, "Human Nature" feels too forced and unengaging." On Metacritic, it has an average score of 56 out of 100 based  on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews." Roger Ebert, in a three-star (out of a possible four) review, lauded the film's "screwball charm".