Body Shots
USA 1999
Reviewed by Kevin Maher
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Los Angeles, the present, late Friday night. Rick and Jane, both in their twenties, lie on a bed talking. Jane's friend Sara enters and claims she has just been raped by Rick's friend Mike. Flashbacks reveal earlier events. That same night, Rick, Mike and their friends Trent and Shawn prepare for a night out. They discuss their sexual techniques and moral attitudes. Meanwhile, Jane and Sara and their friends Emma and Whitney do the same. After getting drunk in separate bars, the girls and boys meet up in a nightclub. Rick and Jane kiss. Shawn, shy and withdrawn, is attracted to Sara, but Mike, loud and abrasive, tries to seduce her. Sara is especially drunk.
Outside the club, Mike beats up a security guard, then leaves in a taxi with Sara. A dejected Shawn has sex with Emma; Trent has sex with Whitney. Later on, Sara arrives at Jane's apartment in tears. She describes how Mike came back to her place and raped her. Mike gives a very different account of the same events to Rick, who is also his lawyer: he says they had consensual sex. Jane advises Sara not to go to court because she was so drunk. She proceeds with the case, but the result is a hung jury. Rick and Jane meet up afterwards. They go back to Jane's apartment and lie on the bed.
Review
Body Shots tries so hard. It wants to be an attractive post-teen romantic-comedy ensemble, a quirky satire of vapid millennial dating habits and a shocking exposé of sexual hypocrisy all at once, but ends up being merely banal and confused. The handiwork of director Michael Cristofer (whose screenwriting credits include Less than Zero and The Bonfire of the Vanities), working from a script by David McKenna (American History X), Body Shots initially invites comparisons with such archetypal Brat Pack movies as "About Last Night..." and St. Elmo's Fire with its attractive, upwardly-mobile cast (four boys, four girls) fretting over the pitfalls of modern relationships. Lifting a narrative conceit from He Said, She Said (and before that Rashomon, 1950, among other films) the characters relate conflicting his and her versions of past events, such as Trent and Sara's contradictory takes on his liaison with an older woman and, more centrally, Sara and Mike's different accounts of their sexual encounter: she calls it rape, he describes it as a one-night stand.
With the introduction of this theme, the film is left nervously scrambling to find the right tone, unable to fall back on the light gender-based comedy of its early part. Ultimately it ends up glossing over the rape itself to focus moral opprobrium on the group's alcoholic tendencies - both Sara and Mike are censured by the gang for "blacking out". In a final inexplicable coda, the characters - all shallow narcissists up until this point - suddenly become wise philosophers on the nature of love, announcing sagely that, "It's love that makes you vulnerable." McKenna's script is peppered with many of these fortune-cookie aphorisms, often delivered with ill-disguised incredulity by the cast.
Cristofer is certainly enthusiastic with his camera, and together with cinematographer Rodrigo García (Mi vida loca), he uses a visual arsenal of tricks to convey the feel of a hyper-kinetic night of debauchery, firing off extreme close-ups, smudge motion and frenzied handheld club shots. But most of all, Cristofer loves filming his designer-clad, beautiful cast. This is a film enthralled to youth, beauty, bodies, breasts and glistening limbs - which makes its depiction of rape hugely problematic.
Despite the early attempts to destabilise the narrational point of view - making us wonder if we're seeing a man's or woman's version of particular events - it quickly becomes clear that the spectatorial point of view is resolutely male. Sara and Mike's "contradictory" versions of the rape story are illustrated by two voyeuristic soft-porn segments, and in both actress Tara Reid is stripped, objectified and fetishised for the camera's gaze. This context makes the movie's final plea for a new Puritanism, free from alcohol and casual sex, particularly nauseating.
Credits
- Director
- Michael Cristofer
- Screenplay
- David McKenna
- Director of Photography
- Rodrigo Garcîa
- Editor
- Eric Sears
- Production Designer
- David J. Bomba
- Music/Score Producer
- Mark Isham
- ©New Line Productions Inc
- Production Company
- New Line Cinema presents
- a Colomby/Keaton production
- Executive Producers
- Michael Keaton
- Guy Riedel
- Michael De Luca
- Lynn Harris
- Producers
- Jennifer Keohane
- Harry Colomby
- Executive in Charge of Production
- Carla Fry
- Production Executive
- Michael Caldwell
- Production Controller
- Paul Prokop
- Production Co-ordinator
- Wendy Riseborough
- Supervising Production Co-ordinator
- Emily Glatter
- Unit Production Manager
- Udi Nedivi
- Location Manager
- Greg Lazzaro
- Location Office Co-ordinator
- Jennifer McGaffigan
- Post-production
- Executive in Charge of:
- Jody Levin
- Supervisor:
- Jay Vinitsky
- Assistant Directors
- Mary Ellen Woods
- Kristen Ploucha
- Hans Berggren
- Script Supervisor
- Susan Bierbaum
- Casting
- June Lowry Johnson
- Libby Goldstein
- Voice:
- Barbara Harris
- Camera Operators
- Scott Browner
- David Garden
- Steadicam Operators
- Rusty Geller
- Chris George
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- Dan Sudick
- Special Effects
- Jan Aaris
- Hal Bigger
- Art Director
- John R. Jensen
- Set Designer
- Daniel Bradford
- Set Decorator
- Kathy Lucas
- Storyboard Artist
- Dan Sweetman
- Costume Designer
- Carolyn Leigh Greco
- Costume Supervisor
- Randall Thropp
- Key Make-up Artist
- Nena Smarz
- Make-up Artists
- Lisa Layman
- Amy Schmiederer
- Key Hairstylist
- David Fields
- Hairstylist
- Tim Lasquade
- Title Design
- Lumeni Productions
- Chelsea Heneise
- Titles/Opticals
- Custom Film Effects
- Mark Dornfeld
- Solo Trumpet
- Mark Isham
- Solo Cello
- David Low
- Strings Conductor/
- Orchestration
- Ken Kugler
- Music Co-ordinator
- Annie Searles
- Music Executive/Supervision
- Paul Broucek
- Music Editor
- Marvin Morris
- Recorder/Mixer
- Stephen Krause
- Soundtrack
- "Biker Bar" by/performed by Mike Figgis; "Shine" by Jon B, and David Elias, performed by Jon B; "Mustang Sally" by Bonny Rice, performed by Buddy Guy; "Modern Day Jazz" by/performed by Courtney Pine;
- "UFO" by/performed by Mark Isham; "Signifyin" by Lou Donaldson; "Ask Me No Questions" by Wendell Holmes, performed by The Holmes Brothers;
- "Altamont Super-Highway Revisited" by Noko, performed by Apollo Four Forty;
- "Bodyrock" by Moby, Bobby Robinson, Gabriel Marion Jackson, performed by Moby contains a sample of "Love Rap" performed by Spoony G and The Treacherous 3, additional vocals by Nikki D; "Bad Girl" by DJ Rap, Julie Anne Tulley, Dom Thrupp, Aidan Love, performed by DJ Rap; "Bang On!" by Alex Gifford, performed by Propellerheads; "F**ck with Your Head" by DJ Rap, Bill Baylis, Dom Thrupp, Aidan Love, performed by DJ Rap; "My Favourite Game" by Peter Svensson, Nina Persson, performed by The Cardigans; "Big Calm" by Paul Godfrey, Ross Godfrey, Skye Edwards, Jason Furlow, performed by Morcheeba; "Beautiful" by/performed by Me'Shell N'degéocello; "Cars Go By" by Chris Seefried, Adam Hamilton, Gary De Rosa, Craig Ruda, performed by Chris Seefried
- Choreography
- Mary Ann Kellogg
- Sound Mixer
- Jose Garcia
- Re-recording Mixers
- Melissa S. Hofmann
- Brad Sherman
- Additional Mix Supervisor
- Mark Stoeckinger
- Digital Mix Technician
- Drew Webster
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Dave McMoyler
- Dialogue Editors
- Frederick H. Stahly
- Kimaree Long
- Effects Editors
- Hector C. Gika
- Scott Wolf
- ADR
- Recordist:
- Brian Basham
- Mixer:
- Ron Bedrosian
- Editor:
- Craig A. Dellinger
- Foley
- Artists:
- James Moriana
- Jeffrey B. Wilhoit
- Recordist:
- Greg Zimmerman
- Mixer:
- Nerses Gezalyan
- Editor:
- Mark Hunshik Choi
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Rob King
- Cast
- Sean Patrick Flanery
- Rick Hamilton
- Jerry O'Connell
- Michael Penorisi
- Amanda Peet
- Jane Bannister
- Tara Reid
- Sara Olswang
- Ron Livingston
- Trent Barber
- Emily Procter
- Whitney Bryant
- Brad Rowe
- Shawn Denigan
- Sybil Temchen
- Emma Cooper
- Joe Basile
- Scott Burkholder
- bartenders
- Liz Coke
- girl 2
- Allison Dunbar
- girl 3
- Edmond Genest
- Sara's dad
- Adam Gordon
- burger joint cop
- Mark Hicks
- bodyguard
- Larry Joshua
- Detective Richards
- Elizabeth Liebel
- Mrs Drofsky
- Marc Lynn
- disco bartender
- Lou Paget
- oral sex instructor
- Adina Porter
- Detective Thompson
- Benny Quan
- burger joint manager
- Wendy Schenker
- doctor
- Nick Spano
- Jeff the doorman
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
- 9,509 feet
- 105 minutes 39 seconds
- SDDS/Dolby digital/Digital DTS sound
- Colour/Prints by
- DeLuxe
- Anamorphic [Panavision]