Lie With Me
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Movie Reviews of Lie With Me
Movie Review: Good story
Summary: 5 Stars
This video was a little more than I expected, but the story line was good. I got the gist of the message.Movie Review: wow.
Summary: 5 Stars
loved it. eric balfour is a beautiful naked man. the sex is good. the love story is good. 'nuff said.Movie Review: Lots of hot sex but leaves you with an empty feeling... Beautiful DVD transfer
Summary: 4 Stars
This was fun to watch yet at the same time rather disappointing (maybe depressing would be a better description). Fun if you go into it expecting sex, pretty faces and writhing bodies. But disappointing because there is little else besides. Depressing because the main characters appear so selfish, self-absorbed and are not in fact very likeable. Its main theme is about two emotionally immature individuals, learning rather late in life, the difference between lust and love. It's based on a short story by Tamara Faith Berger who also happens to be director Clement Virgo's wife. To its credit it tackles the lust vs love angle reasonably well.
For our protagonist Leila, life is one sexual encounter after another, free of emotional attachment, free of commitment, free of love. It opens with a naked Leila (the lovely Lauren Lee Smith) alone on the couch, masturbating while watching a porn video. There is no major dialogue until at least 10 minutes into the film and even then it is pretty banal if not trite, reflecting in a way the shallowness of these individuals. Director Virgo notes that he was trying to make a visual film as opposed to a talkie. And visually, it is beautifully shot. Leila goes to a party, meets David (Eric Balfour), with whom she feels an instant and mutual attraction. However he is with his girlfriend, Victoria (Polly Shannon). So she snares another lucky male whom she proceeds to bl__ and fu__ in the parking lot, in full view of David and his girlfriend, who naturally do the same thing, both couples more interested in the opposite pair than in their own partners. David of course is enthralled with Leila and hooks up with her. They have sex. Then they have more sex. And that's all they have. They don't really have a relationship. They don't communicate. They just copulate. Like rutting animals. Throughout the film, sex is depicted as mechanical, selfish and purely physical and although arousing, it is emotionally empty. The main impression I was left with was one of emptiness, hollowness and how sad these people were, physically connecting yet mentally and emotionally all alone. So much so that when David's ailing father whom he's been dotingly caring for dies, Leila cannot empathise, much less give solace. And neither is David of much help when Leila struggles with her parents' own breakup.
Luckless girlfriend Victoria (Polly Shannon) is, for me anyway, the most sympathetic character here. Of the three she is the only one with any insight into their relationship. She is also given some of the more memorable lines in the movie. During her confrontation with Leila, she warns him against David, "He's got intimacy issues. He needs a mommy," and more cruelly but to the point, "You can suck a guy's dick all you want. It doesn't mean he's ever gonna love you." She may be cast as the "other" woman but you can't help sympathising with her and thinking that she's better off rid of him. Virgo's need to have a "happy ending" where the characters come together after realising their love for each other is simply not convincing. It's hard to believe that these self-absorbed, narcissistic personalities could suddenly develop the insight to relate to someone, other than on a purely sensual level. The odd result is that, apart from the sex scenes, the movie when viewed as a whole, has a pretty depressing feel to it. Still, quibbles about the film aside, the sex scenes are not in the least bit disappointing. In fact, they are hot. Very much so. They are a lot more erotically arousing than in the bulk of porn material shot today which is so clinically anatomical as to no longer be erotic.
Although the DVD is unrated, it would most likely merit an NC-17. The sex scenes are as close to hardcore as you can get without it being X-rated. The missing elements are the money-shots and scenes of actual penetration. Otherwise everything else is there, right down to Leila playfully handling David's little thingie.
Lauren Lee Smith is gorgeous to look at and a very good actress. It took guts to do what she did here and I hope it pays off for her in the future. She should be in more films if only she could make time in between shooting "The L Word." In the commentary, director Virgo and Smith discuss how they first met when he directed her in her first lesbian scene in "The L Word."
The film has been beautifully transferred to DVD in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio (enhanced for widescreen TV). The film as we learn in the commentary was shot on Super 16mm so there is a slight graininess throughout as would be expected from this medium. Otherwise it looks gorgeous. Colors are vibrantly rich, black levels are accurately set, the golden summer palette that Virgo chooses for the film comes through handsomely. Sound comes in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby 2.0 Stereo. Dialogue is recorded at a very low level and is at times barely audible while the pounding music from the nightclub scenes are overwhelmingly loud. Rather like a porn video. I was constantly reaching for the remote to raise and lower the volume. There is an accompanying trailer, a photo gallery and of course the commentary by director Clement Virgo and Lauren Lee Smith who breaks into infectious laughter whenever she's asked to comment on her sex scenes. There is however no behind the scenes footage as advertised by Amazon. In the end, it may not count as a truly thought-provoking or even very credible film but it is arousingly enjoyable nonetheless. From the other reviews here, I take it most viewers will be seeing it for the sex. So, as far as the star ratings go: Five stars for the sizzling hot sex and for Lauren Lee Smith, three and a half for the movie itself.
Movie Review: So This is What the Battle Between The Sexes Has Come To
Summary: 4 Stars
Bottom-Line: To be sure Lie With Me is not destined for the Oscar's, or even release in American theaters, but the movies was meaningful, timely, well directed, and well acted..
The American--and apparently Canadian--dating scene(s) is a mess. If my eighteen year old daughter is to be believed, traditional dating for this generation of young adults is passé, hooking up (getting together just to have sex) is the norm, these days, not the exception. Virginity is no longer a commodity to be cherished, but a badge of shame to be discarded the moment the opportunity presents itself. Fellatio is now performed in bathrooms, dorm rooms and in groups settings with points handed out to the girl who performed the most BJ's in one sitting. While I can see how men benefit from this arrangement, I fail to see how women survive this ritual emotionally unscathed.
I am not implying the women are weak, but they are more emotionally vulnerable than men at this stage of the game as it relates to sex and sexual gamesmanship. Men after all are biologically built to relate to sex as unattached minions moving about the world planting their seed in as many willing females as possible. At this stage in our development we men see sex as a road to domination and pleasure, as well as a biological and physiological imperative.
Women on the other hand, invest much more emotional baggage in the act of sex, no matter the age. I don't see how acting like men and floating from partner to partner engaging in meaningless sex, does not emotionally and philologically harm women, if not on the surface of her soul, then far deeper where the scares can and are life long roadmaps all leading to emotional dysfunction. That is how nature made women, and therein lays the difference between the genders.
Lie With Me (2005) attempts to tackle this changing landscape with a story that is laced with graphic sex, prodigious nudity and foul language, and no shortage emotionally charged messages that pay homage to a tradition well worth respecting, not rejecting. Released in 2005 Lie With Me sets about showing the shallow nature of relationships that are based purely on sex in our instant gratification based society.
Directed by Jamaican born Clement Virgo with screenplay by his wife Tamara Berger--who also wrote the novel the movie is based on--Lie With Me begins with lead character Leila portrayed by Lauren Lee Smith (The L Word) lying topless on the couch in her apartment in Toronto, masturbating while watching a porn video. She soon finishes without climaxing and leaves her apartment to go crusin' for a piece; in other words she is looking to hook-up and she tells us a much in a narrations as we watch her enter a club, and make her way to the bathroom, all the while being groped by anonymous hands. But I got the impression that she enjoyed the detached enjoyment; it turned her on; as she puts it, she is good at fu_king and not very good at relationships, because they take work.
While in the bathroom Leila meets a stranger, David portrayed by Eric Balfour (In Her Shoes, The O.C., Conviction) and forms an instant connection. But there is a problem; he has a girlfriend, Victoria portrayed by Polly Shannon (Earth Final Conflict, Direct Action), but Leila wants to have sex with David so she sets about seducing him by having sex with a nameless man in the parking lot of the club while he watches and has sex with Victoria in the front set of his car. Leila is in this for herself, and while engaged in intercourse continually warns the poor slob not to climax.
My Viewpoints
Lie With Me is not for the faint of heart or for those easily offended by graphic depictions of sex and nudity, not to mention language only a sailor used to utter. Within the 93 minute span of the movie we are treated to almost everything: masturbation, undulating nude bodies, a woman holding a man's erect penis (2x), a man with his face buried between a woman's thighs (2x), repetitive scenes of simulated intercourse (anal and vaginal), and plenty of frontal male and female nudity.
Both Lauren Lee Smith and Eric Balfour need to be praised for their unabashed portrayal of their characters; most of the nudity and sex belonged to them. Lie With Me owes its authenticity to these actors shameless and real portrayals of twenty-something's searching for a connection real enough hold on to. They hide nothing, hold nothing back in their depictions; it helps that their chemistry on screen was almost palpable. Some many argue that the sex became repetitive after a few scenes, but I would argue that it is through the repeated sex that the two principle characters formed their connection.
To be sure Lie With Me is not destined for the Oscar's, or even release in American theaters, but the movies was meaningful, timely, well directed, and well acted. And the movie is titillating without going overboard. If you watch Lie With Me keep the kiddies far, far away; this movie is for adults only.
Movie Review: Lots of sex, tons of cinema firsts, about as close to porn as you can get
Summary: 4 Stars
The movie opens with a topless redhead in fishnet stockings masturbating while watching porn. It pretty much sets the tone for the entire movie.
Lie with Me follows the daily exploits of a porn and sex addicted whore named Leila who fills days and nights with sex, drugs, clubbing and bad acting. She has Sex in the City monologues, as someone in search of intense and unending pleasure, without Sarah Jessica Parker's tone, fake coolness, horrible wardrobe, or resemblance to a horse. Although, she does come off as self-absorbed, confused, ignorant, and lost while thinking she is aware of herself and her needs...so I guess they are pretty similar afterall. But the comparison ends there, because Lauren Lee Smith blows SJP out of the water otherwise.
Leila relives her early promiscuity while courting a guy who looks like Luigi from Mario Brothers; he's the next guy to whom she'll eventually give VD. To woo her new found love (read: lust) interest, she performs a striptease at a playground and begins some mutual masturbation. She even goes so far as to give a BJ and have sex with a guy in a parking lot while Luigi performs similarly with his current girlfriend in a car (first dual BJ & dual penetration in non-porn history!).
Anyway, she manages to land her guy, and has sex with him despite the fact that she has spent less than a day with him and said less than two sentences to him. She has the poor man's versions of dependancy and dominance issues Maggie Gyllenhall had in Secretary. She tries to be edgy by saying cock instead of penis, but even in the face of unimpressive, full-frontal male nudity, it still feels forced and contrived for some sort of shock value that simply doesn't hold firm.
The movie is devoid of acting, character development, script, or story; it's insipid nonsense shoved in between good sex scenes that were obviously the puprose of the movie.
Perhaps what irritated me the most about this movie is the stupidity of the ill-fitting emotional content of the movie. There is no real need to give Luigi any sort of family story line, nor Leila. And to make her shy, or him jealous, is completely preposterous, especially when the basically fell in love between yawns and two sexual encounters. Also, the insipid breakup goes down as one of the worst concepts in movie history.