I thought this article was incredibly pertinent to the barriers that frustrate Bishoujo games’ attempts to penetrate the Western market. It’s a good read.
quote:
Sex: whoa! Violence: who cares?
Atom Egoyan film gets curious reaction at CannesSaturday, May 14, 2005 Posted: 5:57 AM EDT (0957 GMT)
CANNES, France (AP) – Atom Egoyan has learned from his latest film that audiences will play the puritan on sex scenes, not ugly moments of violence.
“Where the Truth Lies,” Egoyan’s convoluted exploration of a musical-comedy duo’s demise, premiered Friday at the Cannes Film Festival and provoked plenty of commentary about its explicit sex.
Yet Egoyan wondered why viewers were so complacent about a scene in which a performer (Colin Firth) viciously pounds an audience member’s head on the floor for heckling his partner (Kevin Bacon).
“It really is interesting to me how people respond to the sexuality but not to the violence,” Egoyan said at a news conference, responding to reporters’ questions about why he went as far as he did in sex scenes involving Bacon, Firth, Alison Lohman and other co-stars.
"No one says that it goes too far when he’s bashing his head against the floor. No one ever talks about that. That’s the most gory scene I’ve ever done, and people don’t have a problem with that. It’s weird. We’re still really kind of obsessed about sex."
Adapted from Rupert Holmes’ novel, “Where the Truth Lies” stars Bacon and Firth as a duo living it up with all the drugs, sex, booze and adoration of the public they can handle.
Bacon plays Lanny Morris, the unruly American schoolboy of the act, opposite Firth’s Vince Collins, a button-down Brit who’s the duo’s authority figure. At the height of their popularity in the late 1950s, they split amid a scandal and cover-up involving a woman found dead in their hotel suite.
Fifteen years later, journalist Karen O’Connor (Lohman) hooks up with the two after persuading Vince to do a series of interviews for a tell-all book. The film weaves through a labyrinth of half-truths and lies as Karen gradually peels away the public faces of Lanny and Vince to learn who they really are and discovers what actually happened to the dead woman.
Lanny and Vince’s sexual conquests, including a threesome with the woman who ends up dead, are presented with steamy explicitness, sometimes as comical commentary on their lifestyle of debauchery.
Karen also is lured into Lanny and Vince’s carnal activities, including a lesbian encounter with a woman in an “Alice in Wonderland” getup.
Bacon figures it may not be the movie’s sex that disturbs people so much as the naturalness of it.
“Sex is often times all right to see as long as the participants are clothed, or some sort of piece of furniture is put in the way of the nudity,” Bacon said. "One of the things about the movie is that when we have sex, we’re naked.
“That’s what kind of flips people out, which I don’t understand. Sometimes, personally, I leave some of my clothes on, but usually … I don’t know about the rest of you. It is unfortunate that people find that so disturbing. To me, I think that the sex in the movie is incredibly appropriate.”
