In one of my favorite scenes from The Simpsons, Nelson Muntz is seen
coming out of a movie theatre showing Naked
Lunch. He angrily looks up at the marquee and says, “I can think of at
least two things wrong with that title!” If Nelson were exiting Lawrence
Kasdan’s stylish noir thriller Body Heat,
he would not have said the same. Body
Heat delivers on all three things promised in its title. Hot stars William
Hurt (in his third appearance) and Kathleen Turner (in her first film role) are
undressed and entwined A LOT in this movie. We know much about their bodies by
the end of the film. The movie takes place during a stifling heat wave in a
small Florida town, and by the end, one is dying for nothing more than a cool
shower. And finally, the movie gives flesh to the idea of “body heat” or human
sexual chemistry as few films have.
William Hurt plays Ned Racine, an ambulance-chasing
lothario whose crappiness as a lawyer is only outdone by his lack of
discrimination in sexual partners. He’s defended every loser in the city, and
slept with most of the single and unhappily married women. He’s good looking,
in a sleazy 70’s porn-star way, so he’s lucky but he seems bored with his usual
prey. One night while cruising for love, he meets a beautiful and mysterious
woman named Matty Walker (Turner) and begins a wild sexual affair with her.
This is not your typical movie affair. Director Kasdan mixes equal parts film
technique and softcore porn levels of eroticism to create some seriously hot scenes.
The slavish rules of film noir lighting, dialogue (often hilariously stilted), and
camera angle were never put more directly to the task of filming sex, and as a
result the entire genre is moved forward just a little bit. More than any other
way, Body Heat succeeds almost as a
tribute to the noir genre and specifically films like The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Obviously, there’s a rub, and it is that Matty
is unhappily married to another man (Richard Crenna), who happens to be fabulously wealthy. Matty convinces Ned that
if he kills her husband they can live sexily ever after with the money she
inherits. Ned, being a sleazy small-town lawyer doesn’t need a lot of
convincing. Like many of the best noir thrillers, the characters seem to inhabit
an alternate universe where morality is for the weak, and the spoils go the
brash. Hmmm, considering the state of the world we currently inhabit, I wonder
whether this is the alternate or the actual state of things. Situational ethics
and expected results from hard-boiled threats may seem like a crazy way to
live, but look how far they’ve taken our president. All this is to point out
that there are no protagonists in this film, just antagonists and
double-crossers. Even Ned’s friends, a local police detective and the town’s
D.A. (ably played by J.A. Preston and an impossibly young Ted Danson
respectively) turn out to be the guys leading the investigation of the murder.
Nobody can be trusted and loyalty is only skin deep - no matter how beautiful
your skin is.
As the investigation heats up and Ned and
Matty’s relationship shows cracks, a sense of claustrophobic disaster reigns.
Eroticism is replaced with dread as the story devolves into one of the more
memorable cross, double-cross, triple-cross, hidden identity plot twists and
revelations of modern cinema. Of course, none of it is really that believable,
but throughout, Body Heat succeeds as
a stylish tribute to film noir sensibilities and conventions, while offering
two important actors early screen cred and a scrap book of themselves when they
were young and beautiful. For the viewer, it is simply a hell of a lot of fun.
-
Paul
Epstein
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