A hard act to follow

I once interviewed Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi, when he appeared in the second of his two films for Catherine Breillat, Anatomy of Hell. With his hand, rather disconcertingly, on my knee, Siffredi recalled how his formidable ability to "keep wood" for hours on end was pushed to the limit - perhaps deliberately - by Breillat's endless takes, while his female co-stars balked at his innocent attempts to seek stimulation.

As a porn star crossing over to the arthouse (albeit Breillat's particularly fruity brand of arthouse), Siffredi demanded respect for at least trying to act. Arguably, though, he had an easier task than that faced by a growing number of serious actors willing to bare all - and seek that elusive on-camera erection - for their art.

Gone are the days when Marlon Brando could be considered risqué, in Last Tango in Paris, for doing little more than talk dirty (while his female co-star, as always, did all the disrobing). Nowadays, if a film aspires to explicitness, the women aren't expected to go it alone.

The latest thesp to put his manhood under scrutiny is the wonderful French actor Mathieu Amalric. In his recent review of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, in which Amalric excelled as the paralyzed French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, Peter Bradshaw commended "one of the most beguiling screen faces". I would agree. But in The Story of Richard O, for possibly the first time ever, you take your eyes off it.

The film is being screened as part of the French Film Festival, which opens across the country today. Directed by Damien Odoul, it's a rum affair - a male fantasy made a little less puerile by its charmingly daft, chain-smoking Gallic pretension. In it Amalric plays a chap who, confronted with the perennial male "crisis" (his girlfriend wants a baby), responds by going on a sex spree around Paris - with 13 mostly anonymous women, none of whom is allowed to beguile as much as the ever-present Mathieu.

Perhaps, after playing Bauby, Amalric was keen to assert that there was life beyond his left eyelid. He proves to be a trooper, and at least reveals an engaging talent for physical comedy, along with, well, the rest of it.

He follows, in no order of size, consistency or skill, the acclaimed Shakespearean actor Mark Rylance in Intimacy, the appropriately narcissistic Vincent Gallo, in the actor-director's own Brown Bunny, and Kieran O'Brien in 9 Songs. Of course there were actresses involved in their scenes (respectively Kerry Fox, Chloe Sevigny and Margo Stilley), but it's the fact that the guys are rising to the occasion that allows these films to attain the effect they're after.

And what's the point? Breillat opened the floodgates to both greater permissiveness and endless debate on that question. I would merely suggest that there is no point, beyond realism for the sake of it; and that of all the men listed here, the only one to "reveal all" in any profound way was, in fact, Brando. We may not have glimpsed the great man's wiener, but he laid bare his soul; and that was infinitely more shocking.




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