Coming Together to Celebrate European Films...
Gasping over the EU’s dirty movie
The latest promotional video from Brussels
shows European citizens engaged in enthusiastic congress,
but it is not the sort of union
the founding fathers had in mind
European cinema has always been associated with
an eroticism that's viewed, rightly or wrongly,
as distinct from the more staid Hollywood standard
I imagine that's what the advert's trading on
It's arguably a bit of a backwards step to keep
banging on (if you'll excuse the expression)
about it but I suppose that's still what a significant
number of the people going to see EU films are after
There are gasps all round. It's over the EU’s so-called dirty movie.
The latest promotional video from Brussels shows European citizens engaged in enthusiastic congress, but it is not the sort of union the founding fathers had in mind.
The film, available on the European commission’s space on YouTube, the video website, shows 18 couples having sex.
The video opens with a man and woman ripping each other’s clothes off in the bedroom while bottles rattle on a shelf. In the interests of sexual equality, two of the couples are gay.
In an attempt at humour that might go down better in Belgium than in Britain, the film climaxes with quivering bedheads and loud orgasms. It closes with the line: “Let’s come together.”
The video is part of a campaign by Margot Wallstrom, the communications commissioner, to boost interest in the workings of the EU.
Other videos among the 44 posted on the website cover the reform of the common market organisation for sugar and the EU’s antifraud office.
But it is the video entitled Film Lovers Will Love This that is attracting most attention.
The scenes were compiled by the commission’s press unit, using footage from Amélie and All About My Mother. Both films were supported by the EU.
Wallstrom’s spokesman was initially unaware of the video’s presence on the site and denied it was in questionable taste.
“This is not pornography,” he said as the video started, but he appeared less sure as he watched it.
“Well, what can I say? It’s a question of taste. It doesn’t always have to be about press releases. These clips explain better what the EU is doing.”
But he added: “We can’t really compete with Paris Hilton yet.”What is the EU's sex film really selling?
Forgive me if this gets too personal, but I am forced to confess a certain sexual ignorance. I've just watched Film Lovers Will Love This, the notorious EU advert that has already got several MEPs hot under the collar.
Produced by the European Commission, Film Lovers ... is a stylish, soft porn horn-of-plenty. It features straight sex and gay sex; tender sex and violent sex; sex in the kitchen and sex in the "toilettes". And quite frankly I didn't really understand it.
All right, it's not so much the sex that's confusing. Spare me the details but I'm familiar with the rudiments.
I can even understand why certain over-ardent types might opt to do it in a "toilette" - presumably one that has just been cleaned and contains securely lockable doors that extend to the floor.
No, the thing that baffles me about the EU advertisement is that - try as I might - I can't work out what it's an advertisement for.
Let's study the evidence. Film Lovers ... runs for a fevered 44 seconds and wraps up with an invitation to "come together".
This, I'm guessing, is the European Commission's way of fostering some kind of intra-continental solidarity while simultaneously raising the prospect of, you know, maybe one day copping off with a foreign chick.
But then this slogan spins away to be replaced by another. "Millions of cinema lovers enjoy European films every year," it tells us. And then another: "Europe supports European films". And beneath this is a corporate logo for something called MEDIA.
And this, surely, is the clue we've been looking for. It suggests that the sex scene montage is selling some notion of European film and plugging some EU-backed scheme to promote it.
But what, exactly, is MEDIA? In desperation we turn to the official MEDIA website. This informs us - and I quote - that "the MEDIA Programme is administered by the MEDIA Unit at the Directorate of Information Society and Media of the European Commission.
The Unit is responsible for the political, institutional, budgetary and communication aspects of the programme as well as its overall evaluation.
A separate body, the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency manages operational delivery of the Programme."
I'm not sure quite what all this means, but it doesn't sound obviously sexy.
In this, as in most things, I blame Haagen Dazs. Back in the 1980s some Madison Avenue hipster had the idea of rebranding ice cream as a kind of sexual hors-d'oeuvres for supermodels (as opposed to, say, a comfort food for obese depressives in miu-mius).
Since then sex has been used to sell everything from life insurance policies to the "operational delivery" of obscure federal programmes.
The latter, I suspect, is the humdrum reality that lurks behind all those explosive fantasy couplings. That said, I figure I should probably watch the film a few more times - just to be certain. Xan Brooks @ CIF