USA,
2001, 86 min
Shown in 2001
CREDITS
- dir
-
Wayne Wang
- prod
-
Peter Newman, Wayne Wang
- scr
-
Ellen Benjamin Wong
- cam
-
Mauro Fiore
- editor
-
Lee Percy
- cast
-
Peter Sarsgaard, Molly Parker, Carla Gugino
- source
-
Artisan Entertainment, 2700 Colorado Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90404. FAX: 310-255-3720
- premiere
-
World Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Opening Night film in 2001. Wayne Wang, Peter Sarsgaard, Carla Gugino in person.
OTHER
No kissing. Separate rooms. No talk of feelings. Sex only between the hours of 10:00 pm and 2:00 am, but no penetration. Those are the conditions agreed upon by a disenfranchised computer engineer and an exotic dancer before they embark on a three-day exploration of sexual fantasies and self-delusions in Wayne Wang’s provocative new feature. After a casual encounter in a coffee shop and a meeting of a more intimate nature at an upscale gentleman’s club, Richard, a young man on the verge of IPO glory, invites Florence to fly away to Las Vegas with him. Reluctantly, she agrees, but only after he offers her $10,000 and she establishes the ground rules. Locked away in their Vegas suite, however, they quickly lose control of their carefully constructed fantasy world. As two people ill-prepared for the erotically charged situation they’ve put themselves in, Peter Sarsgaard and Molly Parker give fearless performances, never shying away from the sexually explicit, emotionally raw material scripted for them under a pseudonym by Wang and authors Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt. Working with digital video for the first time, Wang boldly embraces the voyeuristic qualities of the emerging technology, recording the intimate explosions resulting when sexual fantasy and emotional honesty collide, and ultimately creates a Last Tango in Paris for the wired generation.
—Doug Jones
FACTOID #92
In 1997, the 40 th anniversary of the Festival, four films shared the spotlight for opening night: Bliss, Love Valour! Compassion, Wake Up Love and When the Cat’s Away.
