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| Three directors from disparate cultures put love and sexuality under the spotlight. Wong Kar Wai's The Hand stars Gong Li as a 1960s high-end call girl in an impossible love affair with her tailor. Steven Soderbergh's Equilibrium stars Robert Downey, Jr. as an advertising executive under enormous pressure at work. During visits to his psychiatrist (Alan Arkin), they delve into the possible reasons why his stress seems to manifest itself in a recurring erotic dream. Michelangelo Antonioni's The Dangerous Thread of Things is the story of a ménage-a-trois between a couple and a young woman on the coast of Tuscany. |
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Eros
Eros is a triptych about eroticism and desire by directors Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. The film also serves as an homage by the two younger directors to Antonioni, who has informed and inspired their work. The Italian master has extensively examined this terrain in such classics as L'Avventura, Blowup and The Passenger.
Here, Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh and two of Michelangelo Antonioni's associates offer their comments on the film:
"For me the experience of shooting The Hand was a very intense and intimate one. We began to work on the project in 2003, during the SARS epidemic. The original plan was to shoot in Shanghai. Owing to the epidemic, it had to be revoked. Because of travel restriction, we could only shoot in Hong Kong and Macau. We shot with a very basic crew as many had decided to leave the inflicted area. We tried to shoot as fast as we could. The last two days of shooting were done in a continuous 48-hour shift. Each day, we went through our daily ritual of cleansing our hands and putting on masks. Upon the advice of health authorities, we tried to avoid any physical contact with one another. This situation inspired me to make a film about the act of 'touch.' What motivated me to do this film was Michelangelo Antonioni–who had been the guiding light for me as well as filmmakers of my generation. I am deeply honored to have participated in this project. And, I must also thank Ms. Gong Li, Mr. Chang Chen and the rest of the cast and crew for their unrelenting and generous support for the film."
– Wong Kar Wai
"I wanted my name on a poster with Michelangelo Antonioni."
–Steven Soderbergh
"Antonioni wonders: is a film born first in response to an intimate need of its author or are the images destined to have a value–ontologically–for what they are? I think that in this reflection resides the meaning–or better the presumptions of meaning that Michelangelo Antonioni is searching for–of The Dangerous Thread of Things, a summer's-end, intense colors, a couple in crisis, the other woman. The sense of loneliness, the loss of affection, intimate emptiness: the dangerous thread of things. Rather than a story, Antonioni's film is a mental adventure, where there is no use in looking for an actual story, just rather let oneself be carried by the settings, the suggestions, the provocations, the sensations which are beneath everything. And at the center of it all, there is always the woman, that universe of a thousand refractions that Michelangelo Antonioni has explored in his entire work."
–Carlo di Carlo, Curator of Michelangelo Antonioni's museum in Ferrara (Italy) and cinema historian
"Making Eros was like opening so many windows onto places still unknown to us. It was like following Michelangelo along that dangerous thread of things that only he has in his mind, and which are revealed to us along a path that is as long as our lives. It was very exciting to work with all those people who made this film. Thanks for having given Michelangelo many days of life."
–Enrica Antonioni, Executive Consultant
