How did Virgo direct the sex-and-love scenes? “The actors trusted me implicitly. We never had the conversation, ‘You’re going to have sex.’ But it couldn’t be fake touching. It had to be truthful. If I believed what they were doing, I’d keep shooting. If I didn’t, I’d stop shooting. But it was too embarrassing to say, ‘Give a blow job.’ ”
Email the author:
Gerald Peary: gpeary@geraldpeary.com
Related:
Seven heaven, Heart Land, Prairie state, More
- Seven heaven
Who are the world’s greatest living narrative filmmakers, what I call the Magnificent Seven?
- Heart Land
One of the highlights of this year’s Oscar ceremony was the Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed on the Academy’s greatest director and biggest pain in the ass, Robert Altman.
- Prairie state
I never listened to more than a few minutes of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion .
- Robert Altman
There’s a scene in Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo where Sien (Jip Wijngaarden), the prostitute who lives with Van Gogh (Tim Roth) and poses for him, takes a break from an arduous modeling session.
- The Sixties Photographs by Robert Altman
Santa Monica Press | 192 pages | $39.95
- Fast and loose
You're a cocky film-school grad with a drawer full of socko screenplays and Hollywood ambitions. But it's all California dreamin', as you're shivering in New England, cutting public-service announcements and digitizing educational videos, your only brush with the studios those Netflix rentals.
- Through the Forest | À travers la forêtà
This zippy dream of love and loss spins a bare thread of a narrative in 10 kinetic single-take scenes.
- Nouvelle Vague
If it’s possible to give a one-trick pony legs, then French producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libau have found the secret.
- Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats
Here’s a subject that really could have used a Stanley Kubrick or a John Frankenheimer or a Robert Altman. But are there any great cinematic satirists left, auteurs with the knack for black comedy and cold-blooded irony?
- Feel-bad cinema
This critic's been carping for decades about feel-good cinema, how lousy it makes me feel, and this year I got the misery I begged for.
- Unmitigated Gaul
The French pride themselves on their revolutionary spirit, no less in film than in politics.
- Less
![less](http://cache.thephoenix.com/i/Nav/inform_less_btn.gif)
Topics:
Film Culture
, Entertainment, Culture and Lifestyle, Movies, More
, Entertainment, Culture and Lifestyle, Movies, Abbas Kiarostami, Billy Wilder, Werner Herzog, Martin Scorsese, Relationships, Sexuality, Ingmar Bergman, Less