Eros (film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Eros is a 2004 portmanteau film consisting of three short films: Wong Kar-wai's The Hand, Steven Soderbergh's Equilibrium and Michelangelo Antonioni's The Dangerous Thread of Things.
Releases
- When released in Hong Kong and North America, Wong Kar Wai's 'The Hand' was shown first. When shown elsewhere, Michelangelo Antonioni's 'Dangerous Thread of Things' was shown first.
- The film was censored for sexual content in the People's Republic of China.
Critical response
In North America, critical response for Eros was very mixed. American critics were almost unanimous in their praise of Wong Kar Wai's segment, and almost unanimous in their disapproval of the Michelangelo Antonioni piece. Steven Soderbergh's contribution drew mixed notices.
Roger Ebert gave Wong's segment four stars (out of a possible four), Soderbergh's three stars, and Antonioni's a mere one star. On the syndicated television show Ebert & Roeper, he gave the film a "thumbs up" rating. In his Chicago Sun-Times review, he wrote:
"Are the three films in Eros intended to be (a) erotic, (b) about eroticism or (c) both? The directors respond in three different ways. Wong Kar-Wai chooses (c), Steven Soderbergh chooses (b) and Michelangelo Antonioni, alas, arrives at None of the Above...The Antonioni film is an embarrassment. Regina Nemni acts all of her scenes wearing a perfectly transparent blouse for no other reason, I am afraid, than so we can see her breasts. Luisa Ranieri acts mostly in the nude. The result is soft-core porn of the most banal variety, and when the second woman begins to gambol on the beach one yearns for Russ Meyer to come to the rescue. When you see a woman gamboling in the nude in a Meyer film, you stay gamboled with...I return to Wong Kar-Wai's The Hand. It stays with me. The characters expand in my memory and imagination. I feel empathy for both of them: Miss Hua, sadly accepting the fading of her beauty, the disappearance of her clients, the loss of her health, and Mr. Zhang, who will always be in her thrall. "I became a tailor because of you," he says. It is the greatest compliment it is within his power to give, and she knows it. Knows it, and is touched by it as none of the countless words of her countless clients have ever, could ever, touch her."
Box office
Eros was distributed for theatrical release in North America by Warner Independent on April 8, 2005. Promotion was poor; for example, on Ebert & Roeper, critic Richard Roeper remarked that he was surprised that Warner Independent did not send any clips to be broadcast on the show and that this was the only movie reviewed on the show he remembered for which the studio had taken such a step (incidentally, the critics gave the film a "Two Thumbs Up" rating). Opening on twelve screens, box office was weak, earning just US $53,666 ($4,472 per screen) in its opening weekend on its way to a low US $188,392 final gross.
Boxofficemojo.com reports that the total worldwide gross for Eros is $1,535,829.
