Sirens

Sirens may be the first art film ever to attract the beer-swilling residents of sport bars without it having to be "date" night. The reason is simple: you get to see Elle MacPherson naked. A shrewd theater owner would already be lining up a kiosk in the lobby stocked with the swimwear edition of Sports Illustrated.

That is the obvious selling point for Sirens, and it's a film full of seemingly obvious points. The movie flaunts a kitsch-ridden veneer that resembles a Gustav Klimt poster posed for by Fabio. Part of the fun of Sirens is contained in its calculated mix of flagrant tackiness and half-baked profundity. Sirens is part serious, but it is also part satire. It is also a very sexy, funny movie.

It's the early 1930s and the Archbishop of Sydney has a problem. An Australian painter infamous for his ability to shock has submitted to an international exhibition an etching of a voluptuous Venus nailed to the cross. Hugh Grant (of Maurice and Impromptu) is the English-bred cleric who is sent to persuade the artist to withdraw the work. Grant is young, well mannered, and he claims to know something about art. He also can't go to the toilet without his copy of The Decline of the West.

Along for the journey is his wife, Tara Fitzgerald (Hear My Song). She's a pale English rose and behaves like a runaway from a James Ivory production. They are both very civilized and ever so slightly modern (hubby even smokes Turkish cigarettes). However, the Australian town they arrive in is populated mostly by filthy, belligerent drunks who casually greet strangers with a hearty "fuck off." The James Ivory-type movie comes to an abrupt end.

Instead, they encounter Sam Neill, a painter whose displays of wanton sexuality are overtly rooted in his latent sense of voyeurism. He's also something of a scatter-brained intellectual who divides his time between rantings about the evil of Christianity and mumblings about his own past life. He has a unique outlook on life. He also has a unique living arrangement, sharing his house and family with his three models (now you see where MacPherson comes in).

Neill lives in a kind of Eden, as long as you don't mind the assorted snakes, spiders, lizards and large insects that infest virtually every scene. It's a warped, sensual paradise that briefly offers a strange illusion of sexual innocence.

Sirens offers some solid humor and an elusive charm. Even the movie's predictable structure — plus the clipping of the Indian shipwreck scene that concluded the Australian version — gradually melts into its own distinctive brand of wit.

Bitter Moon

Director Roman Polanski denies that his new film, Bitter Moon, contains any autobiographical elements. Apparently, it's just a coincidence that Peter Coyote's expatriate character comes across as a taller and slightly more demented version of Polanski. It's also just a coincidence that the role of Coyote's French wife, the ever-changing, often kinky Mimi, is played by Polanski s wife, Emmanuelle Seigner. And it's probably just happenstance that Coyote's character is as mentally stuck in Paris as Polanski was, for a while, legally marooned in France. (Is the LAPD still looking for him?)

But then, Bitter Moon has a story that's built as much upon accidents as it is on sex. And most of the film is about sex — good sex, bad sex, wild sex and really bizarre sex. Most of all, it's about two lovers whose mutual passion is based largely on their need to totally humiliate each other. If you're into degradation as a competitive sport, you'll love this movie. If not, you'll find that Bitter Moon is one long drag that (finally) reaches an obvious conclusion.

Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott-Thomas play an English couple who are sailing across the Black Sea on their way to India. They're celebrating their seventh anniver­sary, which is movieland's way of saying that they've become bored with each other. Coyote plays a crippled American who's traveling with his licentious wife, who spends most of her time ogling Grant and dancing to Peggy Lee records. (I can't believe that Polanski had the gall, and was so trite as, to use Fever.)

Coyote, we discover, can no longer satis­fy his wife, so he begins recruiting Grant for the job. His method of persuasion consists of telling Grant the long and windy tale of how their love devolved from passion, to S&M, to (finally) fear and loathing. The truth of Coyote's tale is debatable, but its sordid details are enough to snare Grant in the web of Coyote s obsessions.

It's hard to say "no" to a movie that con­tains such silly lines as, "I'm degrading myself by degrading you," but Bitter Moon is neither enthralling nor (strangely enough, considering the subject) particularly shock­ing. There are a few successful moments of humor, but most of the film plays like a series of boorish confessions

Four Weddings and a Funeral

It always helps if a movie has a great script. It's also a big plus if the director is really good. On these counts, Four Weddings and a Funeral comes close, but no cigar. The screenplay is passable, and the direction is okay, but we're not talking Citizen Kane.

What Four Weddings and a Funeral does have, however, is an extremely good piece of ensemble acting by a set of performers who could read fig­ures from the stock market and still earn a warm laugh. It's a triumph of acting over film­making, but who's complaining? Acting may be the one thing that the English are still good at, and this film is a delightful tour de force that deftly lampoons the absurdity of good manners.

Hugh Grant heads a large cast in the central role of Charles, a young London bachelor who much prefers being a best man to being a groom. He routinely catches up with his pals and numerous ex-girlfriends at their various weddings, where it becomes obvious that Charles has a problem far greater than his ten­dency toward embarrassing faux pas. He's incapable of uttering those "three little words" of endearment — which is why he has so many ex-girl­friends.

This especially becomes a problem when he falls hopelessly in love with Andie McDowell. She's a visiting American who keeps popping up at the same weddings Charles attends. She and Charles begin an incredibly disjointed love affair, despite the fact that Charles can't admit that he's in love with her, and McDowell doesn't expect him to. Besides she's already engaged to a stuffy Scottish politician (Corin Redgrave), which is one of the reasons Grant is so unsure of where he stands with her.

Where the couple mostly stands is at the back of the chapel. Charles' friends are moving down the aisle with the predictability of salmon in the spring, but the closest he gets to the altar is when he fum­bles handing off the ring to the groom.

The plot to Four Weddings and a Funeral may sound thin, even contrived. It is. The whole movie is sliding across a remarkably thin sheet of ice, and what really saves it is some solid skating by Grant and McDowell. Also along for the ride is a long list of eccentric friends who are successfully fleshed out as full-blown characters. Even the minor bits are well handled, most notably one by Kenneth Grif­fiths, whose "Mad Old Man" steals a hysterical five minutes of screen time.

Director Mike Newell is clearly looking to reclaim the previous success he enjoyed with Enchanted April. Four Weddings and a Funeral isn't quite in the same league, but it's close enough. It's definitely one of the few bright spots of the season.