Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

makfu It isn't often that one happens upon a movie as contemptible as Mike Figgis' "The Loss of Sexual Innocence". Mike Figgis has always been a pretentious and overreaching director and screenwriter. His past successes have largely been due to excellent source material and some genuine talent with regards to his technical ability as a director. When these items were combined with truly excellent performances, such as Cage and Shue in "Leaving Las Vegas", Figgis' has managed to produce a legitimately good movie. None of the above is true for "TLoSI".First off, Mike Figgis might think his life is interesting, and perhaps it is, but his own telling of his sex life is dreadfully boring. At least he certainly makes it out to be that way. Sex is almost always a great topic for a movie (even when you show absolutely nothing graphic) because it is such an integral component of the human condition. And yet, in this movie, with all its handsome players, it's mind numbingly dull and extremely anti-erotic.I think possibly the biggest problem that plagues this movie is Figgis' own inability to identify or empathize with other people. This is noticeable in his writing and direction in other movies, but in those cases it appears intentional and provided an unflinching look at disturbing subject matter. This movie actually seems to shed some distressing light on his earlier work as it appears that his detached style of storytelling is, in fact, a flaw. In scene after scene, we treated to imagery that is supposed to evoke emotional understanding, yet the scenes are comprised simply of clichéd approximations of legitimately provoking imagery. It is not unlike watching a sociopath feign remorse or guilt; they might say all the right things and perform all the right actions, but it still comes across hollow and insincere.Now, take all the above and combine it with editing that is full of self aggrandizing nonsense. Soaring music lingers over a minute of watching an Alitalia jet on approach. A series of ridiculous Adam & Eve sequences that culminates in one of the few unintentionally hilarious moments where there is actual filmed urination and, in just one of a hundred disjointed scenes, a totally untalented Julian Sands spewing standard Hollywood token eco-nonsense. And yet, none of what I have written can convey just how awful this movie really is; avoid it at all costs.

rpviking ...Cathartic. Personal. Visceral. Human. Tense. Motivated movement. Deliberate, careful pace. Reactive. Hated or Loved. Transcendental.Not everyone will like this film. I'll venture further to say a lot of people will not like it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a chance. If you like to look at beautiful art in a museum, everything from modern art to the more traditional painterly forms, see this film. If Miles Davis' Bitches Brew speaks to you, you have the capacity to enjoy this film. If you like films that highly affect you, see this one. However, if you are looking for something with a plain, spoon-fed storyline and theme, this is not for you. Or if you don't want to think (you just want to be numbly entertained), go see something else. But to dismiss it for any other reason or to walk out of it before it is over, is a travesty. Give it the benefit of the doubt. Let it say its piece. Like all great works of art, you have to look at it as a whole.The Loss of Sexual Innocence is a bold-faced rebellion against the way people normally appreciate films. It challenges you to feel deeply and search for meanings, just as we do in everyday life; just as it is our nature to do. This film is what you get from it. It is how you see it and interpret it. One person looks at a Velazquez painting and sees an old woman cooking. Another person looks at the same painting and sees the realism of the two fish on the plate and the translucent quality of the raw egg in the soup. And yet another person sees or feels the emotion on the woman's face, empathizing with her. Figgis' film has that capacity. Look at it with those kind of eyes; open-minded. Go with the feelings that it stirs up in you, whatever they may be. Search these feelings out, even after the film is over. A strong reaction from the see-er is the true artist's goal.It is exciting to have a film like this from Mike Figgis. After his more mainstream and widely accepted Leaving Las Vegas, this is a healthy validation for him. The Loss... is masterfully crafted. Every detail and brush-stroke is intentional and utterly important. It plays like a symphony to the senses with both visual and 'audial' recapitulations and cadences; an experience that stays with you.

rcraig62 Mike Figgis' "Loss of Sexual innocence" is another of his undertakings into the world of film art. It's not quite art, and it's not quite entertaining. The film is expressed in a series of vignettes concerning the sexual maturity of a character called Nic intertwined with other bits that are supposed to represent Adam and Eve and the beginnings of sexual discovery and other bits that either mean something or not. The problem, though, is that the bits don't really add up to anything, not schematically, not thematically. Every time the Nic character reappears at a different age, you don't even get a sense of it being the same person; it always feels like Figgis is starting from scratch all over again with a new set of players. Figgis is a talented filmmaker, though. He knows how to build a segment for dramatic impact and how to compose a shot for effect, and in those rare moments, it feels like it's not all worthless and Figgis is getting across to the audience on some level. The sketch of Nic and his family stopping at a roadside gas station is a good piece, as is the woman in the see-through cotton dress at the train stop. There is an implied sexuality there, the sexuality that hums all around us, that we experience without really feeling. That's when the movie scores, when it's not just another lame coming-of-age story. But those moments are all too few. On the other hand, the Adam and Eve bits are trite, and one scene where a man carries a shopping bag with a liquor bottle spout protruding (obviously a metaphor for the male penis) is kid stuff, junkyard symbolism at its worst. Where this movie fails is not is in its structure on the screen, but in the mind. One postscript: After watching it, I put on the director's commentary on the DVD to get maybe a better understanding of what he was trying to do. Figgis narrates with a not-exactly-arrogance but with a tone certainly descending from the mountain. When he spoke the words "we trucked in a load of red clay to recreate the Kenya of my youth", I knew I was done for. I turned it off and switched back to my Sunday Sports Center. 1 1/2 * out of 4

tedg Spoilers herein.Thank god for Mike Figgis. There are more clever directors, and others more intelligent. But no one quite as obsessed with the structure of the narrative as visual music. Some of his other experiments play with folding in other ways; here we get an adventure in parallel narratives at different levels of abstraction.Some reach toward the archetypical, others toward the personal, all very much like `Singing Detective' which it resembles in several ways. Nothing in it struck me solidly until the surprise at the end where Adam and Eve exit the garden to paparazzi and news cameras.Endings are always problematic for experiments where the form is not well established, because so much depends on what we expect. This ending saved the whole project for me. Rugged. Completely transformed all that went before.That's because he treats the whole thing until that point as music: starting with a pure theme, embellishing with variations in several parallel threads, then abruptly shifting from musical noodling to cinematic plunge. That plunge of us INTO the film at long last is his (and his archetypes) exit OUT OF the film into the unkind space that surrounds music.Some films are structured this way, where the entire film is merely preparation, setup, for the end. I know of none other that uses music as the distraction while doing this.Ted's evaluation: 3 of 3 – Worth watching.