Word: passion
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...changed into a Christian brother,/ Attack one nostril and he turns the other"), irons out the swellings of Rostand's perfervid rhetoric. The direction, by Terry Hands, who also staged Much Ado, is as antiromantic as the translation. It retreats from the play's signal qualities: passion and panache...
...Away and similar films did indeed assume the hostile attitudes of rapists. But now, leaping into the fray with the reckless assurance of kamikaze pilots, come two Hollywood films that confront the sexual-violence issue: Brian De Palma's Body Double and Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion...
Body Double required only modest trimming to fit into the movie industry's R rating. Crimes of Passion nearly underwent evisceration. This story of a demure dress designer (Kathleen Turner) who is an uninhibited hooker by night was submitted four times to the ratings board. It finally received an R only after one entire sequence (involving the prostitute, a policeman and his nightstick), several other shots and some lines of dialogue were removed. (Wanted: a new rating, between R and X, for serious nonporn sex films. How about an S?) Even now, it is one steamy, and perversely compelling...
...heart (and it has one), Crimes of Passion is about the sad, sybaritic pleasures embraced by men too old to grow up. And the hooker-dominatrix is really a dark angel who gives herself whole-bodied to her clients' midnight dreams. No less, Turner throws herself headfirst into the film, hyperventilating on the medium's potential for erogenous adventure. This is a clever, daring, mad performance in a movie that is just as reckless. Crimes of Passion and its more lurid brethren in the skin trade are not for everyone, but they should at least be available...
...Jeremy Irons) makes Beatrice every inch the lady of hide-pendent mind. Derek Jacobi's Benedick begins abubble with adolescent spirits, sighing and whinnying like a high school boy who won't admit that he is in love with the college queen. As flirtation ripens into passion, Jacobi's performance becomes calmer and more mature. This Benedick finally recognizes that first love is the most delicate and delicious rite of passage...