The Loss of Sexual Innocence (1999)

Nic is 5 year old in 1953 Kenya. Later, he attends an all-boys school in England. Nic (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) catches his drunken girlfriend Susan (Kelly Macdonald) making out at a funeral. Gina McKee and Bernard Hill play her parents. Adult Nic (Julian Sands) drive his wife (Johanna Torell) and son to a country house. There is a black man Adam and a white girl Eve with a white horse. Another story follows Saffron Burrows as separated English and Italian twins running into each other at the airport. The Italian one is picked up by Nic. They and others go off to the Sahara desert.Writer/director Mike Figgis delivers a disjointed, disconnected story. There is a connection that almost makes sense but never truly delivers any powerful point. It tries to be this big idea starting with the title but ends up with nothing more than a muddled experimental art-house film. It is never emotionally connected. All of the effort is stuck trying to understand the lack of flow.

I figured out the plot(?) out by the end of the film. As confusing as it was with me, I stuck with it until the conclusion as I did with 'Eraserhead.' It's like a difficult crossword puzzle. The film is challenging. What really kept me in it was the music (most of the classics were familiar; Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven) and the photography and imagery. Having a 50" plasma screen helped also. I saw the film on Sundance, which is now airing ads. Still, the film was not edited as is always the case on Sundance, and I appreciate that.The late scene, which depicts a youthful Nigerian boy with a young white Nigerian (is that possible?) being chased by Nazi's with dogs is abstract, not because of nudity, but probably because Nazi's don't like to see blacks and whites naked TOGETHER. (do I really have to put Nazi's in upper case letters).

The only thing that makes this painstakingly slow and utterly incomprehensible movie possible to finish in one go is the soundtrack. Otherwise, it's pretty much a typically European pretentious mess.Absolutely nothing connects to anything, at least not in a reasonable, valid or sufficient manner. Many characters, about which we find out almost nothing, are supposedly connected - but only the director knows how (and even that's questionable, since he was obviously on drugs).The dialogues are as scarce as I've seen anywhere before: this certainly doesn't help in clarifying things. The scenes with the black man and white woman playing Adam and Eve (so PC), and their subsequent exile from Eden by police with helicopters is straight out of Monty Python, except that this is a deadly serious pretentious drama and not a spoof.Is there anyone who can watch that scene in which Adam and Eve urinate (we are actually shown the urine leaving the top of his penis), and take that scene seriously? Most of the cast look like they walked straight out of a New York fashion show, and this cheapens the look of the movie substantially. Lars von Trier and his 95-ers must love this garbage.

I do not understand how one can call this a bad movie. I like it from the first up to the last scene. Beautiful pictures. Sensual narrated by a very talented director. I guess you have to be a sensual human being to feel sympathy for this movie. I feel lucky that i do.