Wild Orchid (18.)
Directed by Zalman King. 1989
Starring Mickey Rourke, Carre Otis, Jacqueline Bisset, Assumpta Serna, Oleg Vidov and Bruce Greenwood. 112 mins. Released on Blu-ray in Dual Format edition by Eureka!
Oh Mickey, you were so fine, you were so fine it seemed to blow your mind. Though supposedly playing a businessman in this “erotic drama” he spends much of his time on a Harley Davidson and wearing an Axl Rose bandana, indicating perhaps his insatiable appetite for self-destruction. The standard Rourke career narrative is about his spectacular fall from grace – and his intermittent comebacks that are immediately followed by him blundering Travolta-esque straight back into wretchedness. He didn't even get his consolation Oscar for The Wrestler: next time Sean Penn brings up sovereignty of the Falklands someone should mention the possession of an Oscar that doesn't belong to him. But that ignores just how slim his glory days were. After a popping up in 1941, Heaven’s Gate, Eureka and Body Heat the period of his pomp would be the five years between Diner and Barfly with other stand outs including Angel Heart and Rumble Fish.
As a long time Mickey Rourke fan I have to say he's a hard man to love – and that's even without him accidentally shooting you, ruining your career or beating you up, all things that would allegedly befall his co-star and future Mrs Rourke, Carre Otis. Still at times during the 80s he did seem like a potential colossus, the most interesting and charismatic man you could possibly build a film around. Brando was usually the reference point but unlike Brando he could be effortless, coasting through without seeming to do anything while Marlon always made it look like work. He was more Montgomery Clift really, an exponent of soft charisma. Wild Orchid sees him pulling a Brando-esque stunt, revelation through erotica.
In Last Tango in Paris, an aging Brando was coaxed into blurting out all his autobiographical tales, his insecurities and weaknesses. In Wild Orchid Rourke goes in the opposite direction, unwisely revealing his tortured self-aggrandizing fantasies of himself. Taking place in a Rio De Janeiro where there seems to be Carnival around every corner, Emily Reed (Otis) the newly appointed legal adviser to Bisset, arrives to help close some big business deal with the Chinese involving a derelict hotel. Reed got the job because of her immaculate credentials and ability to speak five languages but Bisset uses her as a sacrificial lamb to be thrown at Rourke's character, the enigmatic Mr. Wheeler. Mr. Wheeler is indeed a most unusual businessman. When he's not doing the bandana biker man look, he is walking around like a Wall Street Chippendale, bare chested beneath a jacket and waistcoat. This was only 1989 but we are already into the wtf-has-Rourke-done-to-his-face-now period. This time he is so thoroughly suntanned it’s as if he’s been oven roasted – he looks about an hour short of Black facing.
Maybe its sun stroke that causes him to amble through the movie inadvertently sending up all the qualities that once made him famous. The character of Wheeler is a variation on the masochistic control freak he played in 9½ Weeks, an ice cold figure who is enigmatic, mysterious and at least three steps ahead of anybody else. The trademark soft, whispered delivery, which could be so effective, and that sense of control is risibly over done here. He’s like an inverted Nicholas Cage – he’s overplaying passivity, showboating stillness.
It's also a thankless role: the sex guru, from Toyah Wilcox to the hippy couple in the Joy of Sex, is always an obnoxious figure. Wheeler is supposed to be an aloof sex god, but comes across as a smug know-it-all. The film reunites Rourke with Zalman King, the co-writer of 9½ Weeks and the man who would go on to really corner the market in soft porn erotica. The story here is less 50 Shades than 9½ Weeks, but it is still about a distant powerful male playing power games with a female. Otis is the innocent young bloom that he needs to blood. He goes about this by taking her to Eyes Wide Shut style masked balls, coaxing her to make up fantasies about a married couple and getting her to sleep with another man. The twist though is that it is she who is freeing him from his inability to feel. Alternatively, the film could also be read as an extreme acting course, as Rourke puts her into increasingly awkward positions in the hope of provoking some kind of reaction from her: anything to replacee the look of vapid incomprehension from her face.
It needs to be stated clearly that Wild Orchid is a very bad film indeed, so bad-its-bad bad. A horrible script directed with such preposterous reverence that the actors haven't a hope of breathing life into the appalling dialogue. And it isn't the least bit sexy. But then erotica rarely is, it lacks the plain ordinary decency of pornography. Erotica is always beautifully shot because it is basically advertising. Like all advertising it is trying to make you dissatisfied with what you have, to be aspirational. But what you're aspiring to is basically pornography, which is fundamentally downmarket.
Directed by Zalman King. 1989
Starring Mickey Rourke, Carre Otis, Jacqueline Bisset, Assumpta Serna, Oleg Vidov and Bruce Greenwood. 112 mins. Released on Blu-ray in Dual Format edition by Eureka!
Oh Mickey, you were so fine, you were so fine it seemed to blow your mind. Though supposedly playing a businessman in this “erotic drama” he spends much of his time on a Harley Davidson and wearing an Axl Rose bandana, indicating perhaps his insatiable appetite for self-destruction. The standard Rourke career narrative is about his spectacular fall from grace – and his intermittent comebacks that are immediately followed by him blundering Travolta-esque straight back into wretchedness. He didn't even get his consolation Oscar for The Wrestler: next time Sean Penn brings up sovereignty of the Falklands someone should mention the possession of an Oscar that doesn't belong to him. But that ignores just how slim his glory days were. After a popping up in 1941, Heaven’s Gate, Eureka and Body Heat the period of his pomp would be the five years between Diner and Barfly with other stand outs including Angel Heart and Rumble Fish.
As a long time Mickey Rourke fan I have to say he's a hard man to love – and that's even without him accidentally shooting you, ruining your career or beating you up, all things that would allegedly befall his co-star and future Mrs Rourke, Carre Otis. Still at times during the 80s he did seem like a potential colossus, the most interesting and charismatic man you could possibly build a film around. Brando was usually the reference point but unlike Brando he could be effortless, coasting through without seeming to do anything while Marlon always made it look like work. He was more Montgomery Clift really, an exponent of soft charisma. Wild Orchid sees him pulling a Brando-esque stunt, revelation through erotica.
In Last Tango in Paris, an aging Brando was coaxed into blurting out all his autobiographical tales, his insecurities and weaknesses. In Wild Orchid Rourke goes in the opposite direction, unwisely revealing his tortured self-aggrandizing fantasies of himself. Taking place in a Rio De Janeiro where there seems to be Carnival around every corner, Emily Reed (Otis) the newly appointed legal adviser to Bisset, arrives to help close some big business deal with the Chinese involving a derelict hotel. Reed got the job because of her immaculate credentials and ability to speak five languages but Bisset uses her as a sacrificial lamb to be thrown at Rourke's character, the enigmatic Mr. Wheeler. Mr. Wheeler is indeed a most unusual businessman. When he's not doing the bandana biker man look, he is walking around like a Wall Street Chippendale, bare chested beneath a jacket and waistcoat. This was only 1989 but we are already into the wtf-has-Rourke-done-to-his-face-now period. This time he is so thoroughly suntanned it’s as if he’s been oven roasted – he looks about an hour short of Black facing.
Maybe its sun stroke that causes him to amble through the movie inadvertently sending up all the qualities that once made him famous. The character of Wheeler is a variation on the masochistic control freak he played in 9½ Weeks, an ice cold figure who is enigmatic, mysterious and at least three steps ahead of anybody else. The trademark soft, whispered delivery, which could be so effective, and that sense of control is risibly over done here. He’s like an inverted Nicholas Cage – he’s overplaying passivity, showboating stillness.
It's also a thankless role: the sex guru, from Toyah Wilcox to the hippy couple in the Joy of Sex, is always an obnoxious figure. Wheeler is supposed to be an aloof sex god, but comes across as a smug know-it-all. The film reunites Rourke with Zalman King, the co-writer of 9½ Weeks and the man who would go on to really corner the market in soft porn erotica. The story here is less 50 Shades than 9½ Weeks, but it is still about a distant powerful male playing power games with a female. Otis is the innocent young bloom that he needs to blood. He goes about this by taking her to Eyes Wide Shut style masked balls, coaxing her to make up fantasies about a married couple and getting her to sleep with another man. The twist though is that it is she who is freeing him from his inability to feel. Alternatively, the film could also be read as an extreme acting course, as Rourke puts her into increasingly awkward positions in the hope of provoking some kind of reaction from her: anything to replacee the look of vapid incomprehension from her face.
It needs to be stated clearly that Wild Orchid is a very bad film indeed, so bad-its-bad bad. A horrible script directed with such preposterous reverence that the actors haven't a hope of breathing life into the appalling dialogue. And it isn't the least bit sexy. But then erotica rarely is, it lacks the plain ordinary decency of pornography. Erotica is always beautifully shot because it is basically advertising. Like all advertising it is trying to make you dissatisfied with what you have, to be aspirational. But what you're aspiring to is basically pornography, which is fundamentally downmarket.
