Privates Lives (2001)

D. Otto von De Mille
Colour

Two years after the disaster that was the final Sexy Goth Girls movie, Liddy D’Eath and Otto Van De Mille reteamed for this spin on Noel Coward’s ‘Private Lives’. It’s difficult to see from the outside what kept D’Eath and Van De Mille together, why one of them didn’t explore what other opportunities there were. There are rumours of an affair between the two, but it seems to have finished before they started making films. So far, so Woody Allen/Diane Keaten, but Keaten did at least go off and make ‘The Godfather’, Liddy D’Eath just stayed true to Von De Mille. This is surprising as whereas he is an adequate director, there’s something quite special about her screen presence. Not just her physicality, which is waif like, with blonde hair and big eyes and tattoos which suggest a tarnished angel, but also a genuine charisma that only Van De Mille seemed to want to capture. And that’s odd, as once again in a collaboration between the two we see Liddy D’Eath using a defibelator on the struggling material she has been given, going so far as to give it frantic life to life in a struggle to give it any kind of pulse. It must have been disconcerting for her to work so hard and still only get phone-calls from her weirdly named ex-boyfriend.


Before long the two of them would embark on another series of films which would match the best of the Sexy Goth Girls movies, but first there is this interesting, curiosity of a mis-step. A comedy of modern sexual manners, a bedroom farce which doesn’t get near achieving the right balance between bedroom and farce. Having married impetuously, Liddy and her new wan-faced husband (played by the void like, Jackson Wilson) find themselves on honeymoon in a remote desert hotel. But she is shocked to discover that in the next bedroom is not only her ex hot and heavy boyfriend (the big and brooding, Douglas Conifer) but his new bride, who happens to be her college lesbian lover (Jenny Picard). The stage is set for passion, jokes, recriminations, misunderstandings, fetching leather lingerie, laughter, tears, innuendo, broken hearts and more exploring of sexual confusion than even Noel Coward would ever have dreamed possible.


Let’s be clear, this isn’t porn. There are points when it looks like it’s just going to tip into porn, particularly when the women seem about to reignite their passion with a breathless, full-on session. The camera lingers and it feels as if the bass line is going to strike up and we should either be watching this in a darkened room alone, or in a cinema with lots of other shifty men. But it never quite tips over into porn, although nor does it really become anything else. The dialogue, as you’d expect from the man who made the ‘Sexy Goth Girls’ movies, is frequently very funny – but it’s hardly likely to reach the standards of Noel Coward. (I think that Coward would have enjoyed this film though, perhaps with martini in hand and a bemused, amused look on his face). However the dialogue never touches the emotions it needs to. And because in a set up like this the emotions need to be addressed, there are whole amateurish scenes with craply written dialogue just to get them out of the way. As such what we end up with is a drama which isn’t dramatic enough, a comedy which isn’t funny enough and a porno which isn’t pornographic enough. Liddy D’Eath doesn’t even look that gothic, for god’s sake. It’s an odd faltering stumble of a movie, although one massaged into some kind of decent shape by the charms of its leading lady, but better isn’t far away.