Eros

Impressions before seeing it
For those who don't know, Eros is not a traditional movie, but three short films by three different directors. One of those directors was Wong Kar-Wai, hence my interest.

How was it?
Wong's short opened the film, but I have to admit I found it a little boring. I do respect what he was going for though, because while the three shorts are meant to be about sex, he takes a more subtle approach. There is no nudity or raunchy sex except for some implied off-camera stuff, and in classic Wong Kar-Wai style he focuses more on the romance aspect. I just wasn't able to muster up much interest or enthusiasm for his story about a tailor's relationship with a client. But I suppose it was good aside from that.

The second short came from Steven Soderbergh and had almost nothing to do with sex except for a lot of talking and some footage of a naked woman getting dressed. However I did find it to be the most entertaining of the three thanks to Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin. Arkin plays a psychiatrist and Downey is his patient, but it's done with kind of a 40's/50's look and Arkin humoursly scrambles in the background to make contact with someone in an adjacent building while Downey is droning on about his thoughts. Unlike the other two, it was light and funny.

The third and final short is courtesy of Michelangelo Antonioni. I have seen Antonioni's Blow Up, so I'm not entirely unfamiliar with his work, but this one just went right over my head. I think it was one of those artsy films where the story isn't as important as all of the visual metaphors and read-between-the-lines dialogue, and it just left me confused. And I'm not sure if it was just the version I saw, but for some reason it looks like the actors spoke their lines in English, but then it was dubbed into Italian and subtitled back into English. I don't know if it was intentionally symbolic of something or if Antonioni just really wanted to use English speaking actors, but it looked really stupid. It was also the most sexually gratuitous of the three and had some really beautiful landscapes - I'm not sure if it was filmed in Italy or not, but I was impressed with that part at least.

Recommendation
To recap: Wong's is the most romantic, Soderbergh's is the funniest, and Antonioni's is the most pornographic. The first two are worth watching if you have any interest in them, but the third is not unless you really love beautiful landscapes... and softcore porn. As a whole, though, Eros is just kind of average and I was expecting better.