At 4:15 pm on Sunday May 14th, 2011 I found myself sitting outside the Palais Theatre J excited to see the 5:30 pm showing of “the world’s first 3D erotic film.” A line began to form behind two of my fellow University of Georgia (UGA) festival-goers and I just after 5:00 pm. As 5:30 pm dauntingly approached, a petite young Asian woman desperately sought after buyers to fill the seats of the theatre by scouring every floor of the Palais. About half of the theatre’s capacity was filled with buyers by 5:25 pm. By 6:15 pm I was anxious to escape the confines of the Palais Theatre J. If I had not waited forty-five minutes in anticipation for the “world’s first 3D erotic film,” there is no way in Hell that I would have put myself through those one hundred and thirteen agonizing minutes of horrendous filmmaking. The entire movie seemed to be an excuse for unjustified violence against women, 3D gags, phallic jokes, and misogynistic sexual fantasies. This movie has absolutely no redeeming values and I would be perfectly content if the film’s financiers lost every cent invested in such execrable pulp fiction.
The Cannes Festival Pocket Guide describes 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy as a movie that is “based on ‘Yu Pu tuan (Sex and Zen),’ an infamous classic erotic novel from the Qing Dynasty[.] The Secret Art of Chinese Sex is a story about a horny scholar and his wife indulging themselves in the world of sexual desire and pleasure…”. This is a horribly inaccurate synopsis of the film. I did not find myself mentally or physically aroused at a single point through out the entirety of the movie. When I think of erotic film, movies such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Godard's Contempt, and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut come to mind. Films that showcase eroticism from both male and female mental and physical perspectives. The creators of 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy clearly think that eroticism is derived from the misogynistic objectification of women and sophomoric phallic humor. I truly felt as if I was watching a film written by a moderately creative and disturbed seventh grade male whom has just discovered phallic slang terms and internet pornography.
I have seen my fair share of sexually graphic and violent film scenes such as the infamous Monica Bellucci rape scene from Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible or Zed’s basement scene from Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, but I have never seen such unwarranted and misogynistic violence as the majority of the scenes from 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy. The main antagonist, Prince Ning, is constantly raping women with his three-foot penis or abusing them in one way or another while achieving pure bliss from his actions. Early on in the movie he smacks a girl in response to her violence against another concubine. Here the viewer thinks he is stopping the beating in protection of the girl being beaten but to our chagrin, he quickly pulls out a pistol and shoots the in-distress concubine in the head. For what reason you may ask – well, I wish I could tell you. Prince Ning’s sadistic and unjustified violence only intensifies as he goes on to rape women and torture the main protagonist throughout the movie. Eventually Prince Ning has the protagonist castrated in the films climax because the man had uttered one unkind phrase about him to a village elder. I am still unsure of how any moviegoer could relate to any of these actions.
When reading the description of the film as “a story about a horny scholar and his wife indulging themselves in the world of sexual desire and pleasure,” I figured that the film would focus on the struggles between a married couple attempting to keep there marriage from growing stagnant. The film most certainly focuses on the horny scholar’s (i.e. the husband’s) sexual indulgences but does not once address the woman’s sexuality other than her function as a sexual object. The only “adventures” the wife experiences during the movie are the terrors of being raped by an assassin and escaping a public execution in consequence of her being raped.
I have personally never seen a film that has objectified women so shamefully. Every sexual situation is purely male-centric as the woman is used purely as a lubricated orifice. Women are beaten, murdered, raped, tortured, and used as sexual objects for the full one hundred and thirteen minutes while the audience painfully watches. One grotesque example of this stands out in particular to me. A woman’s vagina is mutilated by a mechanical spinning metal lotus flower attached to the saddle of a wooden horse while Prince Ning laughs in delight and the viewer watches in disgust. How anyone could enjoy such crass and tasteless subject matter is beyond me.
With all of the misogyny and unjustified violence aside, the movie still was an immature showcase of a two hour-long penis joke. The main character’s penis is “too small” to pleasure concubines so he swaps his penis with that of a donkey. He then has sex with ten women at a time and magically becomes a master of sexuality. Penis slang terms and physical gags (e.g. Prince Ning’s three foot long penis shown via silhouette) seem to be the punch line of nearly every scene. Whether it was viewing a small penis through a magnifying glass or a penis that uncoils like a six-foot snake from around a man’s leg (which the man uses to spin a wagon wheel), 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstacy’s humor is too sophomoric for even that of the average thirteen-year-old American boy.
After regretfully viewing this movie I wish there were some way I could commandeer those two hours of my life back. The film was a feeble excuse for misogynistic showcases of the female form, unjustified violence, sophomoric humor, and 3D gags. My advice to anyone who comes within a mile of a cinemaplex where this film is playing goes as follows: run away - run far, far away.
Director: Christopher Sun Lap Key
Writers: Stephen Siu (screenplay), Mark Wu (screenplay), Yu Li (Novel)
Stars: Saori Hara, Vonnie Lui and Yukiko Suô
Produced by: Stephen Siu Jr. (Executive Producer) and Stephen Siu (Producer)
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