Film Review: “Saved!” and “Last Tango in Paris”
On the surface it wouldn’t seem like these two films would have much in common. One, “Saved!,” is a portrayal of life in a Christian High School; the other, “Last Tango in Paris,” explores an affair between a 20-year-old French woman and a forty-five-year-old American who engage in anonymous sex in the middle of Paris. But they both have a lot in common, including the fact that I find myself defending both of them against their detractors.

Obviously, they both explore our relationship to our own sexuality. In “Last Tango in Paris” Paul (Marlon Brando) and Jeanne (Maria Schneider) act, almost instantly, on their sexual attraction, which they explore in an almost-empty apartment over several days as Paul waits for his wife’s funeral and Jeanne waits for her wedding. The film was banned in Italy when it was first released in 1972, and received in a “X” rating in many regions. Today, the uncut version is branded as NC-17, but, if you came to this film, as I did, in the new millennium, the rating will seem odd. It’s not nearly as explicit as is a film like “American Pie” or “Road Trip,” but it is more powerfully sexual because of it refusal to fall into conventional ways of depicting sex on film. In true pornography, the sex acts are “real” but simulated. I mean, who, besides Paris Hilton, makes love in such a staged manner? In “Last Tango in Paris” the sex is simulated, but “real.” There is no romantic music in the background, no fading to black on a slow-burning candle, and no awkward scenes of a vibrating night-stand. Instead, we see two people groping and grabbing and . . . well, and having sex. The approach is summed up in the famous scene where Jeanne, sitting nude, facing a nude Paul, suggests, “try to come without touching.” They can’t, and that is the point. We need to touch each other, and we get the sense that sex for Paul and Jeanne is not about trying to fit some idealized, we might say, “cinematic” image of sex, it is not about procreation, and it is, I think, definitely not about trying to depict love by portraying physical intimacy. Whatever sex does for Paul and Jeanne it does not translate to us. We can’t come without touching.

In “Saved!” the notion that Christians are sexaphobic hardly needs stating. The film does, however, provide us with a twist on this theme. Mary (Jena Malone) attempts to use sex, in this case heterosexual sex, to “cure” her boyfriend, Dean (Chad Faust), by sleeping with him. This one sex act fulfills its biological imperative, leaving Mary pregnant and alone as Dean is shipped off to Mercy-House for “de-gayification.” But the more interesting relationship develops between Mary’s mother, Lillian, portrayed by one of the most sincerely sexual actresses of our generation, Mary Louise-Parker, and Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan), who is also the school principal. Skip and his wife are separated, but he refuses to get divorced, because that is not “part of God’s plan,” and Lillian is a widow, who obviously longs for something more from Skip. They refuse to pursue a physical relationship, denying what they both want, because their Christian convictions deny them this. But, eventually, they relent, and Skip feels this disqualifies both Lillian and him from adequately caring for the pregnant, and obviously sinful, Mary. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Skip. His marriage has failed, but his convictions condemn him to be alone, and though he is falling in love with Lillian, he can’t touch her, and he “can’t come without touching.”

But these films also explore the ways in which love not only makes us blind, it makes us believe that our hopes for those we love must be their hopes, and in the process we end up squashing them. In “Saved!,” Mary puts this succinctly: “If God’s wants us all to be the same, why did he make us all different?” A simple observation, but one missed by most religious fundamentalists. Similarly, the non-religious Tom (Jean-Pierre Leaud) in “Last Tango” is “in love” with Jeanne, and he’s making a film about her. It’s not hard to figure out why Jeanne needs Paul when Tom is, before our very eyes, trying to turn the object of his love, Jeanne, into his own (in this case, cinematic) creation. Tom follows Jeanne around, interviews her, and asks her all the right questions, but we get the sense that this process reveals less to us about Jeanne than does the anonymous space created for her by Paul. Sure, we realize that Paul is motivated by his intense pain. We know this from the opening scene where we see him screaming at the train. But there is an honesty to this neediness that Tom does not bring to their relationship.

This is what I found in evangelical Christianity. I found a lover who only wanted the best for me. I found a lover who was genuinely interested in me, but this interest was part of larger project of conversion, converting me into a “good Christian,” and “Saved!” is, essentially, peopled with “good Christians.” Satirizing the hypocrisy of this goodness is where all the humor comes from. If you’ve seen Mandy Moore or Jena Malone out promoting the film, you’ve seen the exorcism scene where Moore’s character, Hilary Faye, shouts at Mary, “I am full of love” as she throws a Bible at Mary. There’s also the line where the two skeptics, Roland (Macaulay Culkin) and Cassandra (Eva Amurri), spot Mary coming out of Planned Parenthood. When Cassandra claims there’s only one reason a Christian girl would be near Planned Parenthood, Roland responds, “planting a pipe-bomb?” But there is more for those of us who have spent our lives in this culture. There is Pastor Skip’s attempt to be relevant, “Are you kids down with G-O-D?” and Lillian’s snug Christian bubble (she wants to be Christian Interior Decorator of the Year), and the classes, the chapels, the worship band, the shallow piety, all rang true for me.

Of course, other people who also know this subculture as well as I do, disagree. My sister was not much impressed with this film. Neither was my friend, Susan, who suspected, contrary to fact, that the writer was clearly “not an insider.” But I thought the the film’s evangelical world was nicely drawn. For twenty years of my life, I was Hilary Faye! Almost every youth worker I know IS Pastor Skip. I enjoyed the satire. It was delicious.

But there’s another more serious criticism leveled against the film by evangelicals. Todd Hertz, film reviewer for Christianity Today, complained that the film didn’t show any loving evangelical Christians. I disagree. Hilary Faye is a loving evangelical Christian. She sacrifices a lot of time and energy to try to help others. She organizes a prayer meeting to pray for Dean’s de-gayification. She labors over and over again to convert Cassandra to Christianity, and isn’t that what she should do if she believes Cassandra is bound for hell? I respect Todd Hertz, but if he met Hilary Faye, or me, or someone like us, we would be the loving evangelical Christians he claims the film is missing.

This is the problem: evangelicalism is loving. Why do you think they spend all that money and time trying to convert people? They are saving souls from hell. Why do you think they spend so much time, effort, and cash on things like Promise Keepers and Second-Chance Virginity (both lampooned in “Saved!”)? It is because they do love people. They love people more than most liberal Christians I know. But they love from a place of absolute rightness and righteousness. I know Mr. Hertz, you’ll claim you don’t have all the answers . . . but you do, don’t you? Truth be told, I think most of your answers seem right to me, too. The problem is that your absolute rightness gives you the right to love us all into being “good Christians.” No wonder so many of us have wandered off to crummy apartments with strangers. Don’t you realize you can’t make us come without touching us, really, truly touching us?