Stone-cold erotic chestnut about the mistrustful, wounded, possibly impotent man and the one and only woman who can "cure" him. The man in the equation, who's supposed to be dark and distant and complicated, is instead just Mickey Rourke, with a face like a smoked ham and a low-volume voice with all the seductive power of a motel-room air conditioner. The woman, fresh and pure as if only a few weeks off the android assembly line, though ostensibly sprung from the Kansas wheatfields, is screen newcomer Carré Otis, an uninteresting mannequin with a pair of novelty-store oversized plastic lips. A master of a half-dozen languages and, you must take her word for it, a specialist in International Law ("I've always been fascinated by other cultures, their customs, their rituals"), this prototypical Cosmo girl knows she's a long ways from Kansas when she wanders through a ruined hotel on a beach in Rio and comes upon two dark-skinned natives -- bodies like racehorses -- making love standing up under a handy indoor water spout. She has been brought to this place, and perchance to the aid of her dark knight, her wounded warrior, her romance-novel Amfortas, her tinpot Tristan, on the pretext of some incomprehensible real-estate deal, but more truthfully in expectation of catching some tropical sex fever. And sure enough. After all, it's carnaval. The director, Zalman King, who previously did "Two-Moon Junction" will never become the cinematic D.H. Lawrence or cinematic Lawrence Durrell or cinematic whomever he aspires to be, until he overcomes, among other things, the notions of glamour, good looks, sensuality -- not to mention plot complexity -- gleaned from TV commercials. Specifically ones for sunglasses, blue jeans, shampoo, perfume. Until such time, we're never going to miss those few seconds, those few frames, that make such a highly publicized difference between an "X" and an "R." With Jacqueline Bisset. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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