Jennifer Lawrence in No Offense
Nude scenes in Hollywood are, to quote the title of Tom Cruise's early sex comedy, a risky business . Be successful and you can send your career into the stratosphere. Failure, and you set yourself up for either lustful fantasy or mockery. So it's not surprising that fewer and fewer mainstream actors are stripping down on screen; it's easier to jump around pixelated scenery in stupid costumes than to expose your body, and sometimes more. But just because something has been missing from our screens for a while doesn't mean it can't come back.
Jennifer Lawrence's new sex-themed comedy No Offense was heralded before its release as a mainstream picture that will bring back the good old days of adult-oriented obscenity to cinema. Those tired of the sexless, over-serious worlds of Marvel and Star Wars may have been looking forward to a movie like this. But, according to the paper's film critic Robbie Collin, the marketing gave the audience a bait and a clue; No Hard Feelings, he writes bitterly, is «a bunch of joyless nonsense.»
However, there is one scene that stands out and will no doubt be the subject of discussion on social media for some time to come. The film's trailer teases a skinny-dipping scene between Lawrence and her co-star Andrew Bart Feldman, and most viewers familiar with the promise of nudity from the A-list star already know what to expect; modest camera angles and the presence of an understudy for distant shots. But not here. Instead, as Collin writes, «Lawrence ends up fighting several teenagers on the beach in the nude: it's not exactly funny, but the scene's insane, gratuitous ruthlessness does have some genuine shock value in it.»
«Real shocking value» when it comes to screen nudity — at least in movies — is something that has been largely lacking in mainstream filmmaking for years. While TV shows like Game of Thrones, Idol, and The White Lotus revel in their edgy, revealing sexual content, their cinematic counterparts have largely eschewed showing body parts of famous actors, albeit with notable exceptions. In an age of intimate relationship coordinators and pervasive concerns about claims of exploitation and lewdness — not to mention the firm knowledge that any nude scene will be public domain online within days, if not hours, of a film's release. It's not hard to see why filmmakers and stars avoid nudity.
Lawrence's brazen appearance in No Offense may seem like a risky choice for such a mediocre film. But that this should be a topic of discussion is partly due to the fact that she was the most notorious victim of the 2014 celebrity nude photo hacking scandal. «I never wanted the world to see my naked body» — Lawrence. later said. “I couldn't make this decision. Making this film, doing this for my art… I feel like I took something that was taken from me.” (The actress also had nude scenes in the spy thriller Red Sparrow, which she called «terrifying» but also inspiring.)
As she points out, there is a huge difference between personal images that are taken and distributed against the will of the person, and the carefully crafted representation of one's image in the film in which it is shot. In theory, while the former is both illegal and a grotesque invasion of privacy, the latter should be essential to the integrity of the film and the performer. It's not for nothing that the old adage of an actor or actress declaring that they will only strip «if it's necessary for the role» is one of the industry's most famous clichés.
If only it was always considered as such. The now almost forgotten cyberthriller by Hugh Jackman and John Travolta, Swordfish gained notoriety after its release in 2001 for a brief topless scene featuring female star Halle Berry for which she was paid an additional $500,000 on top of her $2 million fee. . “I did this inappropriate scene and I knew it was inappropriate,” admitted Berry. “And I did it because I needed to do it. I needed to face the fear [of nudity].” (Unfortunately, the same article began with the words: “Sparkling her reckless breasts in the thriller Swordfish was the best thing she has ever done in her career,” Halle Berry said yesterday.)
Subsequently, Berry appeared nude in Mark Forster's Monster's Ball as the widow of an executed convict who begins a relationship with her husband's jailer and won an Oscar for soul and body performance: all made possible, if she is to be believed, by a 30-second, extremely an exploitative topless scene in a film aimed primarily at teenage boys.
Halle Berry in Swordfish. Author: Alamy
If the current film climate is puritanically opposed to nudity, then screen nudity may have reached its zenith in the 80s and 90s. The infamous scene in Basic Instinct, in which Sharon Stone spreads her legs without panties in front of a room of sweaty men, has become the definition of a new subgenre of on-screen erotica, but the actress wrote in her recent memoir, The Beauty of Life Twice, that she was sure the explicit depiction will not be visible on the screen. When she realized she had been duped, she slapped the film's director Paul Verhoeven and called her lawyer before reluctantly realizing that the benefits to her career, including a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, outweighed the humiliation she experienced.
In any case, she participated in an exploitative industry where on-screen nudity was reflected by off-screen pressure to sleep with co-stars and producers. As she remarked, «Sex, and not just on-screen sexuality, has long been expected in my business.» Stone briefly became a popular actress for such nudity roles, but few had the same cultural weight as «Basic Instinct»; The likes of Sliver, The Specialist, and the dark sequel to her most famous 2006 film did nothing for her career, and she soon took on roles far below her ability.
Meanwhile, her co-star Michael Douglas, himself closely associated with the erotic thriller through his roles in Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, may have bared his butt, but that hasn't dented his credibility in any way. (There were rumors that Verhoeven wanted to show his erect penis on screen, but the studio vetoed it in horror.) A few weeks ago, he was awarded the Honorary Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in recognition of his career.
Ewan McGregor and Emily Mortimer in Young Adam
Nudity is considered less burdensome for male actors than it is for females. Jason Segel's extended frontal nude scene in the comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall is played for genuine laughs rather than any erotic effect, and there was a point in young Ewan McGregor's career when virtually every movie he appeared in, starting with On needle.» on Velvet Goldmine, he made a cameo appearance on his penis.
Asked by a confused interviewer in 2003 if his fans would be disappointed that he wasn't fully nude in his Young Adam film, an offended McGregor replies, «There's one, you must have blinked! They will be very happy.» And more recently, Benedict Cumberbatch's army of dedicated fans — the so-called «Cumberbitches» — may have cherished his nude appearance in The Power of the Dog, which, as the actor joked, was «not such a big deal anyway. ”
However, perhaps in this more austere age there should be a broader conversation about the need for screen nudity for everyone, men and women. Moments like in Neil Jordan's The Crying Game where the main character's gender is revealed as a central plot twist are really important to the movie and really rare; most of the time when an actor takes on a nudity scene there is always a slight suspicion that there is some misplaced quality to it. I still remember moments from the 2000 teen thriller The Hole, in which Lawrence Fox and 15-year-old Keira Knightley were filmed naked, and how sickeningly exploitative the footage was. They may have had a commercial imperative, but certainly not an artistic one.
Jane March and Bruce Willis in The Color of Night. Image Credit & Copyright: PA
There have been other instances where undressing actors has been detrimental to their careers. Both Bruce Willis and Jane March were mocked a lot for their nude scenes in the 1994 erotic thriller The Color of Night, but while Willis just shrugged his shoulders and starred in Die Hard with a Vengeance, former model March's career never recovered. even if Maxim magazine did call her appearance «the best sex scene in cinema history.»
Elizabeth Berkley's nude lap dance in Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls was widely derided, proving that Stone's rise to superstardom was a fluke, and Margo Stilley's ill-advised decision to engage in mock sex scenes in Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs forever defined her as a «woman.» who had sex in a hit movie.»
And if Jane Campion played Cumberbatch in Power of the Dog and Holly Hunter in The Piano in nude scenes, they both won awards, she had a very different experience with Meg Ryan in In the Frame. Regular viewers who considered Ryan the queen of romantic comedies were unable to accept this highly charged and provocative role, and it meant the end of Ryan's place at the top of Hollywood's A-list almost overnight.
Meg Ryan as Jane Campion. Author: Alamy
However, Lawrence's nude scene in No Hurts — whether it's uplifting, plot-critical, or just «crazy, gratuitous ruthlessness» — is unlikely to do such damage to her career; she is too versatile and talented, as well as accomplished, to be defined at a moment like this. (Compare this to the protests caused by Lily-Rose Depp's on-screen nudity and the sex scenes in Idol, and the difference between modern cinema and television becomes very apparent.)
Screen nudity may be disappearing these days, so its presence in films is becoming more, not less, prominent. Given the climate in which these photos are now being taken, it's not hard to see why actors are reluctant to shoot nude scenes, and there will no doubt be fewer and fewer of them as time goes by. It simultaneously eliminates the specter of exploitation both on and off the screen—less Harvey Weinstein figures offering a casting couch—but also makes cinema a more chaste and less interesting place where natural (and unnatural) human sexuality is eerily absent.
Nonetheless, at least we will never have a replay of perhaps the most shocking moment I have ever seen in a movie theater. Judi Dench's comedy Mrs. Henderson Presents tells the story of the Windmill Revue Bar, which allowed performers to be naked as long as they remained still. Dench didn't strip, unlike many of her co-stars, but the jaw-dropping moment came halfway through when Bob Hoskins, who plays the impresario Vivian Van Damme, was persuaded to take off his clothes. The cries of indignation and horror of the public at the sight of Hoskins, completely naked, will remain with me as long as I live. If ever a reason was needed to ban nudity in movies, this was the only reason.
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