A sealed source. The locked garden is my sister, the bride, the enclosed well, the sealed spring. – Songs of Solomon’s Songs, 4:12
Inspired by the original worldview of the great scandalist Lars von Trier, Jean-Marc Barr, until the end of the 1990s known as a good actor and already starred in the Blue Abyss by Luc Besson and in Trierovo films, in 1999, being 38 years old, decided to put his first film - "Lovers". This touching story about the vicissitudes of love of a Parisian saleswoman and an illegal migrant had a modest, but still a success, enough so that the aspiring director did not lose heart. It was hard to imagine how to continue the sad story of the meeting and separation of two soulmates in an indifferent metropolis, but Barr studied with Trier for a reason. He overcame the narrowness of the theme by moving not forward, but upward, and decided to look at the chanted love from the other side. What is the opposite of love as the union of two hearts? That's right, sex.
There was very little sex in Lovers. Surprisingly little for a modern and truly French love film. But the director, fortunately devoid of karma Tinto Brass, and did not set himself the task of visualizing erotic passion, but simply showed ordinary love in its everyday artlessness and everyday life. For such love, the problem was not sex, but only separation. Such love presupposed sexuality and its realization as a natural and self-evident manifestation of human power. But what if the power of human sexuality meets obstacles? What if the body's natural desires are locked up in it like a prison? And the potential for love finds no way out? And the best doctors, including the wisest psychoanalysts, cannot help? That’s when we face the problem in all its considerable growth. And the statement that “we don’t have sex” is no longer laughable.
This is exactly what Jean-Marc Barr did in his second film, Too Much Flesh. The fact that the director played a major role here is not accidental and most likely testifies to Barr’s extremely personal perception of the topic posed. Topics that cannot be understood too narrowly, but should be interpreted broadly as human freedom in general. What could be more natural than sexual desire? And what could be more obvious than the impossibility of their implementation as a manifestation of human unfreedom? Oh yes, this unfreedom, of course, has social causes – not always obvious, but often invisible, manifesting itself only after the beginning of the liberation of man. Friends and neighbors, who have smiled sweetly and caringly cared for you all your ugly life in a small farm town, suddenly become the worst enemies after you dare to follow your desires. But the causes of this same lack of freedom are also inside you, and it is these internal causes that must be dealt with first.
The plot of the film is both simple and unusual. The 35-year-old farmer Lyell has long been married, owns vast lands and is respected by his countrymen. No one cares about his deep dissatisfaction with his life, until his childhood friend comes to town with a charming Frenchwoman, Juliette. Mademoiselle is so sweet and natural in all her manifestations, not excluding sexual sympathies, that our hero, without thinking twice, shakes off his fictitious duty to his wife, with whom he never lived a sexual life, and contrived decency accepted in local society. And thanks to such a simple and natural step, he learns a lot about himself! It turns out that the opinion, promiscuous in his youth by his first girlfriend, that he has “too much foreskin” is nothing more than stupid gossip and idle fiction, and sexually he is no worse than any other man. It turns out that he can be happy, and for this happiness you need very little.
The picture, despite the theme it is devoted to, can not be called erotic. It can not be attributed to melodramas, since it has almost no history of the feelings of the characters. It is more of a social drama, but it arises and develops from such a seemingly trifling matter as the satisfaction of sexual needs. Jean-Marc Barr and his co-author and cameraman Pascal Arnold do not savor intimate details, do not escalate tension, do not complicate the plot with any adventures. They shoot almost like amateurs – artless and simple, sometimes too simple. And the point here, apparently, is not so much in Trier’s Dogma-95, the principles of which they formally adhered to, as in the preferences of their own taste. They are alien to the desire to make big or commercial films, but they are faithful to their desire to explore through the cinema those human secrets that interest them. Maybe that’s how you make a movie?
What turned out in the creative tandem, can not be attributed either to masterpieces or even to a significant phenomenon of cinema. There is no outstanding directing, no interesting acting, no virtuoso camera work. But it has that precious grain, which is often, too often absent in the works of famous masters and creators of mind-blowing box office. There is a simple sincerity of feeling in it, the one that can be conveyed to the viewer who is not only seeking superficial entertainment, and which gives real fruits of meaning. Despite the modest requests of Barr and Arnold, they managed to throw a new look at the question of the relationship between sexuality and freedom, far from being comprehensively covered in literature and film, and thereby make some contribution to the understanding of human nature. It’s more expensive than any cashier, isn’t it?