Wild Orchid

Angie and I spend more time fantasizing together during sex than we ever did in our past 25 years of marriage. It has become a wickedly delicious and exciting spice to our bedroom activities once we got past the initial awkwardness and mild embarrassment at each other’s admission of this guilty pleasure.

Guilty pleasure. What a notion.

I am a sucker for any book or movie that lets us vicariously live a character’s experiences, growing awareness and exploration of things hidden, desirable, and maybe even taboo. I think that is why I like what Angie and I are going through.

Several movies and books have come out over the years that delve into the story line of sexual experience and awakening. One of the best books ever, in my opinion, was/is The Story of O. I told Angie about it, and we saw a movie that was something of a documentary about the story behind the story. Angie was intrigued enough to buy the book and has started to read it. I think I am going to enjoy her guilty pleasure as much as she is herself.

The movie Wild Orchid came out in 1990 and starred Mickey Rourke, Jacquline Bisset and Carrier Otis. It is the story about the sexual awakening of a young woman, Emily (Otis), while on business in Rio de Janeiro as an assistant to high powered corporate rain maker, Claudia (Bisset), who is leading a big land development deal with the locals for a future vacation destination. While there Emily meets a mysterious and apparently wealthy, but jaded, man, Wheeler (Rourke), who leads her through transforming experiences.

The movie was never widely accepted by the critics. I think the movie was a box office bomb, because of poor plot development and script. Otis was a newcomer to Hollywood; and as I read later, she was Rourke's girlfriend at the time. He got her the role. Otis was later quoted in the press as saying it was the worst decision of her professional life. Well, I never saw her in another movie, so maybe she was right. Rourke kind of faded to a "B-" list actor. Jacqueline Bisset somehow stayed above the whole fiasco.

Angie and I love the movie for the visuals, erotic scenarios, and sound track at key points in the movie. It has a fantasy feel to it, as you, the viewer, see the city sights from on up high to the background music of Rio during the movie’s introduction. Later, but still early in the movie, the character Emily is touring the area where development is underway, and she enters an old building on the property, that is slated to be torn down. While drifting through one of the many dilapidated rooms and hallways she spies a couple who have apparently snuck into the building to have some fun. The couple appears to be of Creole/ African heritage, and they are remarkably beautiful. Their bodies look to be the work of an erotic artist's fantasy: magnificent curves and angular planes in the exaggerated proportions of a succubus and incubus; dark skin that is almost blue black in sheen.

The couple engages in rough foreplay; he tears off her shear dress to reveal that amazing body, then takes her up against the wall. They proceed to have the ferocious sex of big felines. An overhead water pipe, apparently broken for some time, is pouring a stream of water over the lovers in cooling respite to the heat of the afternoon and their love making. Emily is entranced as she watches the two for a time before running off in shame at her own voyeurism and growing lust.

As Emily comes into the orbit of Wheeler you learn that he once had an affair with Claudia, and that she has never really gotten over it. This sets up a triangle that comes to a head later in the movie, but doesn’t bear much comment. This part of the plot is no where near as fascinating, and is somewhat of a distraction to the dynamic between Emily and Wheeler.

One sequence has Emily and Wheeler witnessing a Carnival-like party near the hotel they are staying in. The party-goers all wear costumes of bright fabrics, some revealing, and most wear masks. Everyone is dancing wildly to the throbbing uptempo beat of salsa music. The dancing reaches a frenzy as an unknown couple in costume begins to mimic coupling on a table in front of the crowd. The erotic scene captures Emily’s undivided attention as Wheeler looks on to gage her reaction.

A few more parts of the movie bear watching for their erotic flavor. There is a scene in a limo where Wheeler forces Emily to watch a husband and wife have sex in the back seat while she is sitting right next to them.

As she begins falling ever deeper into Wheelers orbit of influence Emily finds herself set up for a rough sex encounter with a strange man, as a sort of dare by Wheeler, that she accepts.

Near the end of the movie, through implausible transitions in their “relationship” and the plot line, Wheeler has somehow won Emily’s heart and come to terms with his own world-weariness. The capstone scene, in the unrated version of the movie, is an extended fucking sequence on the floor of Emily's hotel room that is shot by the director from every conceivable angle. It was supposed to be the real deal if you believed the Hollywood hype being pumped out at the time. However, the plot has been lost by the time you get to this point in the whole mess, but the scene IS a good one, in my opinion, and the individual vignettes noted bear watching for the arousal factor.

The movie elicits in me a sense of “what could have been” if the script and movie were in the hands of the right director. I had the same reaction when I saw Eyes Wide Shut. You could feel a very palpable sense of mystery and eroticism, particularly in the dancing sequence early in the movie between Nichole Kidman and an older stranger behind a mask. The inuendo just under the surface of their flirting, and dizzy whirling of their close dance, suggests all sorts of possibilities. Then watch the part where the husband Bill (Tom Cruise) spies upon the ritual undressing of the female sex slaves at the mansion to get a sense of the dream quality to the movie. If you know the story behind the movie, you know that Stanley died just as the film went to the edit room, and the studio brought in some ham-and-egg director to finish the job. Some critical scenes were re-shot poorly, the back-up director should have been shot, and it turned out to be a mess. But, the movie was very stylish, and there were some juicy scenes. Like Wild Orchid, it was all about personal exploration of things hidden, desirable, and taboo.