The Wayward Cloud: Melon obsession

DIRECTED BY Tsai Ming-Liang, 2005

STARRING Lee Kang-Sheng (Hsiao-Kang), Chen Shiang-Chyi (Shiang-Chyi), Sumomo Yozakura (Japanese porn actress)

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains pornography theme, strong sex and one scene of sexual assault

RUN TIME 114 mins, Axiom Films

LANGUAGE Mandarin

COVER QUOTE 'High comedy, high-camp musical numbers and a vast amount of hardcore porn' - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT The Wayward Cloud was released in the UK simultaneously with Tsai's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006). The latter is the better film, but The Wayward Cloud is brighter, camper - and probably the most unusual sex film you'll see.

Born in Malaysia, of Chinese background, Tsai moved to Taipei aged 20 to continue his studies. After a visit home, he intended to make a film about foreign labour but this transformed into a story about porn stars. To Tsai they lead a double life and find it hard to be accepted.

THE PLOT Taiwan is in the grip of drought: the foremost method of hydration is either bottled water or comes from watermelons, which are experiencing a boom. Chen and Lee, from Tsai's earlier What Time Is It Over There (2001), meet in a park; a watchseller in that movie, he now acts in porn films. He helps her find a key and they both try to open a mysterious locked suitcase and hang out together, smoking or cooking. (In one scene in the kitchen, they reenact the lobster escape from Annie Hall, this time with crabs.)

He washes in the water tank on the roof of the building, she fantasises over a giant watermelon she keeps in the fridge. She inserts it up her top and walks around with it as if pregnant, simulating giving birth on the building's stairs. A film crew is making a porn movie in the same building; when Chen finds the lead actress passed out in the lift she takes her back to her flat but the shoot continues, using the unconscious woman. Throughout there are many musical numbers.

THE FILM The Wayward Cloud opens in a generic, grey underpass but much of the film, interspersed by kitsch musical numbers, couldn't be more colourful. Even the watermelons, which lie at the heart of director Tsai's fantasy, glow green and bleed bright red.

The musical numbers involve a glittery reptilian creature basking at night-time in the building's rooftop watertank (the Nat King Cole-like The Half-Moon), a torch song number (sung by actress Lu Yi-Ching) and another featuring conical bra-ed women bearing plungers in a bathroom full of urinals and a man dressed as a penis - literally a knobhead (Be Patient!). In another, a bevy of women fondle a smiling statue of Chiang Kai-Shek, while the Laughing Policeman-inspired song highlight features a cross-dressing date gone wrong and a troupe of dancers bearing umbrellas emblazoned with a watermelon motif (What a Date!).

With its 1970s soundtrack, Deep Throat could be a porn musical, and director Gerry Damiano was keen to see a big-budget cinema that embraced hardcore sex. Albeit as a Taiwanese art-house movie, The Wayward Cloud is somewhere close to meeting his dreams, with its over-the-top musical numbers.

While the songs in Tsai's movie are surprising populous - on a par with Les Demoiselles de Rochefort at times - the non-musical scenes tend to feature one person on his or her own, and even when there are more people present - the couple of Lee and Chen, or the porn film crew - very little is said, if anything. The songs feature essentially the only dialogue in the movie.

By contrast, the amateur porn shoot in Lucas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart is a far more chatty, argumentative affair. The subjects in both films are equally isolated from the outside world: Moodysson's characters bound to their flat, those in Tsai's film getting no further than their building's stairs or lift, which seems to go nowhere. Both directors are concerned with their characters as outsiders: an extreme of embodiment of the urban alienation which is a favourite theme of their films.

Despite its extreme scenarios and premise, there is no full-frontal nudity in The Wayward Cloud. There is, however, the rape of the porn actress while she is unconscious so that the film's shoot can continue unhindered. It could be funny if it weren't unconscionable. Chen has previously recognised her from a porn DVD she watches wide-eyed; she comes to realise her partner Lee's new profession.

At the begininning of the film, Chen is presented as somewhat unhinged, hanging around road works insisting she has lost her key amid the builders' heavy machinery. She does find her key, however, and Lee helps her dig it up from the freshly laid tarmac. Water wells up in the hole he has created but, even in these drought-afflicted times, it is ignored.

KEY SCENES Chapter 1, 2:12 A woman in a nurse's uniform lies splayed on a bed. Between her legs is half a very large watermelon. A man in a white coat first licks and then puts his finger in the watermelon, moving it in and out firmly. He inserts more fingers and moves them more vigorously. The woman acts as if he is jacking her off; he feeds her big pieces of the fruit and licks the juice off her naked body. They have sex with him wearing the carved-out watermelon shell like a helmet.

Chapter 5, 45:52 The porn crew are filming a scene in a bathroom. The porn star is bent over the woman, fucking her from behind, as a crew member improvises the effect of a shower using water bottles. In disgust, he finally runs out of water. They continue with some very murky-looking green water.

Chapter 7, 1:02:00; 1:05:24 The man masturbates in a doorway watching the Japanese female star playing with herself on a kitchen counter. She uses a small water bottle but stops when the top comes off; a crew member is ordered to help.

Chapter 10, 1:34:00 In the final scene, the male porn star is filmed having sex with his unconscious female counterpart. The crew variously hold up or manipulate her body as required. Chen watches them and becomes vocally aroused; at the crucial moment, the porn actor leaps up and comes in her mouth.

FURTHER VIEWING Lee Kang-Sheng stars in all of Tsai's films from their debut Rebel of the Neon God (1992), usually lending his name to his characters. They met in a video games arcade.

KEY QUOTE 'The [bottle] cap's inside the Japanese girl. Go see' - porn film director

BONUS CURIO For the film, Tsai made star Lee die his pubic hair 'a golden colour, like a lion's mane.'

Intermission: Leap Year

Director Michael Rowe was inspired to write Leap Year, which is out this Friday, by a story he was told 'about a conservative woman who'd accepted a sadomasochistic relationship in order to keep her lover from leaving.' Laura (Monica Del Carmen) is a freelance business journalist: her day is made up of ringing editors for work ('30 tips to take advantage of the economic crisis'), carrying the can when things go wrong, eating, cleaning (the fridge), reading (Erich Fromm), wanking. She's also alone: a ring on her hand and picture by her bedside may hint at a man in her life but she pretends to family and one-night stands she has a full time seeing friends, going out and eating well, when she's mooching around in her pyjamas scoffing something from a tin.

Set in Mexico, Leap Year portrays a very different life to that of Y tu mamá también's spoiled brats, rather Laura could be a grown-up daughter of the indigenous couple at the centre of Battle in Heaven. Australian Rowe has lived in Mexico for 16 years and says he has an outsider's perspective on Mexican society, though the Spanish-language film is very much an inside job: other than views from the window, his camera never leaves Laura's flat. This is Rear Window without the repressed sexuality; Laura masturbates watching the next-door couple performing mundane tasks.

Laura misses their intimacy, which she finds in Arturo, a man who takes sly interest in her while dealing out beatings. Their sex progresses in the manner of the couple in Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses, through throttling and pissing to knives. Initially submissive, Laura strips ready for sex every time Arturo appears, like Cécilia in L'ennui. Throughout the film Laura crosses off the days of her February calendar; she takes control of the relationship towards the end of this leap-year month - it could be called 29 Days Later.

Emmanuelle: Arsan about

DIRECTED BY Just Jaeckin, 1974

STARRING Sylvia Kristel (Emmanuelle), Daniel Sarky (Jean), Christine Boisson (Marie-Ange), Marika Green (Bee), Alain Cuny (Mario)

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong sex and nudity

RUN TIME 90 mins approx, Optimum

COVERLINE 'Full uncut version: never before seen in the UK' (in capital letters, naturally)

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT The debut of a long-running film franchise, Emmanuelle is based on a purportedly autobiographical work from the 1950s published under the name Emmanuelle Arsan, real name Marayat Rollet-Andriane. (It's been said that the series of books written by her were penned by her diplomat husband, however.) The film became a more acceptable version of Deep Throat for cinema audiences around the world, running for more than 10 years at one cinema in Paris until it closed in February 1985.

Over the decades since its release, many of the cuts originally demanded by the BBFC have been reinstated. The most contentious issue is the film's gratuitous depiction of sexual violence - notably, Emmanuelle's reaction to it - but, in 2007, the full film was finally released, uncut.

THE PLOT Emmanuelle travels to Thailand to join her diplomat husband, Jean. Prior to her arrival, Jean has boasted to his colleagues of their tremendous, open, sexual relationship (and, indeed, shown them naked pictures of her). Though Emmanuelle was faithful to him at home in Paris, she sleeps with two men on the flight to Bangkok.

Arrived in Thailand, Emmanuelle has to cope with the boredom of the expat-wife lifestyle as well as the advances of at least one predatory lesbian, Ariane. Emmanuelle is drawn into the plans of gamine Marie-Ange and falls for archaeologist Bee. When she accompanies the latter on a trip, Jean is overtaken with jealousy and visits first a strip club, where he gets into a fight, and then Ariane, with whom he has violent sex.

Bee tells Emmanuelle she doesn't love her after they've had sex and Emmanuelle returns home, heartbroken. Jean, Marie-Ange and Ariane all encourage her to accept the advances of their ageing friend Mario. He takes her to an opium den, where she is raped, and then offers her as prize to the winner of a Thai boxing match.

THE FILM Emmanuelle gives me a headache. It's not just the migraine-inducing soundtrack (by Pierre Bachelet) but also the grotesque cod philosophising. Add to that dubious sexual politics and it's surprising this film has such a reputation that it is continously revisited, either in new versions or rereleases.

There is, too, the film's take on its Thai setting as the 'exotic East', reinforced by Emmanuelle's first experience of the sights and clamour of a Bangkok market. The film's view of the locals is little better: when Emmanuelle and Jean go to bed to have sex, they're watched by their houseboy and a maid. The houseboy then chases the maid into the garden and what begins playfully appears to end in rape; this is a theme revisited at the film's end.

In the meantime, there's an aspect of the movie that's less commented on, but equally troubling. Along with Bee, Emmanuelle quickly falls under the spell of the much younger Marie-Ange, whose no-nonsense sexual manner she admires; Emmanuelle wants to achieve Marie-Ange's innocence.

The latter is portrayed in a very childlike manner: she's usually seen sucking on a lolly ('It makes the old guys hot for you,' she explains) and has no qualms about stripping off, even masturbating (to a magazine photograph of Paul Newman), in front of others. She says she has played with herself since she was 12, but it's never clarified how old she is; she admits to fancying Jean and, later, he says they have been spending the night together.

At the film's start, we are almost immediately given a glimpse of Sylvia Kristel's pubic hair, as she lounges in her Paris home. The big muffs of the seventies must be a great boon to filmmakers as they surely cover any number of potential arguments with censors. The only pricks on show here, however, are the men themselves.

Most of Emmanuelle's sex scenes are fairly desultory affairs: the lesbian liaisons tend to revolve around squash games, clinches in the locker room or, oddly, against a ladder propped up in the corner of the court, which would surely be a hazard to any player. Thai performers are depicted in much more explicit scenarios, not least when one is shown smoking using her vagina.

Pleasure, freedom, hypocrisy and eroticism are the film's buzz words but the dialogue becomes unpalatable with the arrival of lothario Mario. He professes that 'love between couples should be outlawed. Every act of love must include a third person.' This pseudo philosophy leads to the rape of Emmanuelle in an opium den, followed by her subjugation in front of a room full of spectators. (Ariane also tells Emmanuelle that Jean 'practically raped' her.)

Neither scene is as graphic as we've come to expect nowadays but it was only a few years ago that the BBFC allowed the film to pass uncut, because of the board's standards on the eroticisation of sexual violence, particularly when a victim is depicted enjoying a non-consensual act. Don't let the seventies fluff that fills most of this film fool you - there's a darker message here that, exceptionally, seems to have been allowed through.

KEY SCENES Chapter 3, 16:28 Emmanuelle goes for a swim, naked, with the camera following her underwater. She is joined by Marie-Ange.

Chapter 4, 25:27 Emmanuelle is shown having sex with two men, separately, on her flight to Bangkok: first in her seat then, with the other man, in the plane's surprisingly roomy bathroom.

Chapter 7, 52:11 A performer at a sex club visited by Jean smokes a cigarette with her vagina; a couple then participate in a lesbian floor show.

Chapter 8, 55:36 Bee and Emmanuelle make love; the former manages to climax with the latter apparently biting her knee.

Chapter 10, 1:18:28 Emmanuelle is raped at the opium den she attends with Mario.

Chapter 11, 1:24:11 Emmanuelle is taken from behind by the victor of a Thai boxing bout at Mario's behest, in front of a room full of spectators.

FURTHER VIEWING There are any number of further Emmanuelle adventures, many boasting different spellings of our heroine's name (IMDb lists some 70 entries). By the time of Emmanuelle IV (1984), Kristel undergoes plastic surgery and is replaced (by Mia Nygren), although she did revisit the role in the early 1990s. The series had long before reached its nadir with Carry on Emmanuelle (1978), an unhappy mingling with the camp British comedy franchise.

Fans of 1970s softcore may want to investigate the work of photographer David Hamilton. His silly, Vaseline-lensed romps feature more naked young women, including - in Premiers Désirs (1984) - Emmanuelle Béart, as well as the obligatory, irritating soundtrack. His best-known work, Bilitis (1977), is a barely palatable coming-of-age tale.

KEY QUOTE 'I didn't marry Emmanuelle to keep her to myself... I'm not jealous' - Jean

In the Realm of the Senses: Empire state

ALSO KNOWN AS Ai no korîda, L'empire des sens

DIRECTED BY Nagisa Oshima, 1976

STARRING Eiko Matsuda (Sada Abe), Tatsuya Fuji (Kichizo Ishida)

CERTIFICATION 18

RUN TIME 98 mins approx, Nouveaux Pictures

LANGUAGE Japanese

COVER QUOTE 'The expression of total passion' - The Times

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT Four years after hardcore Deep Throat, and two years after the soft-focus Emmanuelle, director Oshima distilled the desperation of sex for this exceptionally explicit arthouse movie. This version is available uncut though, crucially, one scene involving a very young child has been panned and scanned.

As the closing narration explains, Oshima based his film on a true story of a murderous affair which took place in Tokyo in 1936 and saw Sada Abe being treated as something of a folk hero in Japan. The insular complicity portrayed between the two protagonists means the film is not wholeheartedly moving but it is an extraordinary vision of sexual obsession.

THE PLOT Former prostitute Sada works in an inn, where she and another maid spy on the owner, Kichizo Ishida, and his wife having sex. When Sada is maligned as a whore she breaks into a furious row, which has to be broken up by Kichi. Kichi makes a pass at Sada when she is working and the two begin an affair, first in the inn and then visiting neighbouring hostels. At one, the couple stage a wedding celebration.

The couple become notorious with the staff at places where they stay for remaining confined in their rooms, barely eating but drinking and fucking all the time. Sada arouses Kichi's jealousy when she goes to visit a client while Sada herself becomes increasingly possessive of Kichi, threatening to cut off his penis if he ever has sex with his wife again.

The affair becomes more intense as the couple introduce strangulation into their intercourse. Sada strangles Kichi, apparently with his previous understanding, and then cuts off his penis. According to the closing vioceover, she wandered the streets of Tokyo gripping his dismembered member for four days before she was arrested.

THE FILM When Kichi first meets Sada she is wielding a knife. He lewdly implies she should be holding his penis instead and, for much of the rest of the movie, she is grasping one, the other, or both. Famously, a knife is finally applied to his penis, fatally.

In the Realm of the Senses opens with a scene of a homeless drunk being abused by some children. When Sada goes to his aid, he recognises her, claiming he used to visit her as a client. He begs one last encounter, offering to pay, and, momentarily, she takes his penis before being called away. There's an immediate sense of the power sex has over her and, perhaps, her own sexual power, which may have reduced this man to the gutter.

Sada is aware of her own attraction to sex and it is important for her, early in her affair with Kichi, to distinguish it from madness. 'I'm not sick,' she says; she's visited a doctor, showing the level of her concern: she's not a nymphomaniac, or any other tawdry diagnosis that might be applied, but 'hypersensitive'.

There is, also, an early indication of her propensity for violence: when she sees Kichi being shaved by his wife, Sada imagines taking the blade and attacking the woman. The scene which has been optically altered shows her tugging a small boy's penis, an image that would likely be deemed indecent under the Protection of Children Act.

Kichi is initially portrayed as a dissolute, if charming, drunk, prone to giggles and singing. He is fascinated by Sada's youth ('I'm no longer so young - how I envy you') and, as her madness grows, increasingly falls under her spell. He is the first to take her by the throat but the roles change as he says he can't bear to see her suffer. He allows her to throttle him with growing force for the pleasure it gives her (it is unclear if he is afforded any thrill beyond her enjoyment). Alongside some outdoor shots, these later scenes are some of the most beautiful in the movie as they achieve an almost mesmeric quality as she rides him in the throes of her orgasm.

Much of the film concentrates on his penis: it is shown erect, Sada fellates him or, at other times, holds a knife to it. When he wakes one morning, he finds her playing with it. 'Did you hold it all night,' Kichi asks. 'Of course.' 'It's as if he was yours,' he says later. 'He is.' Sada even has him piss inside her though, at another time, Kichi muses this is the only time his penis can rest. When they go home, she leads him by his penis and, of course, it becomes the focus of her threats: 'If I cut him off will you die?' 'Probably.' 'Then I don't want to.'

They do venture out, if only to go home or earn some money, and the outside world is an unwelcome visitor on their frolics. Maids criticise the state of their room - smell is especially important to Sada, while both partners enjoy the feel of each other's skin - encourage them to eat or, at least, to have less sex. They seem particularly shocked by Sada's continual willingness to suck Kichi's cock. At one point Kichi is warned, 'She'll end up killing you.'

By then, they are so wrapped up in their perpetual orgy, this prophecy is accepted as inevitable. Sada seems to achieve one incredible, final, orgasm at his death; in blood, she writes on her lover's body: 'The two of us, forever.'

KEY SCENES Chapter 2, 14:05 Kichi has Sada mount him at his home while she plays a musical instrument to cover for his wife. After sex she sucks his penis while he smokes a cigarette.

Chapter 3, 26:06 Sada and Kichi have sex in front of a group of women musicians. One of the women is deflowered by the others using a dildo carved in the shape of a bird before they all join in.

Chapter 4, 40:36 Kichi rapes the elderly madam of the inn where he and Sada are staying while Sada goes to visit a client, a school principal, to earn some money. She urges the ageing teacher to hit her, first across the face, then pinch her and pull her hair.

Chapter 5, 49:26 Sada 'lays' an egg that Kichi has inserted in her vagina, a surrealist image worthy of Georges Bataille. In his Story of the Eye (1928), protagonist Simone indulges in just such behaviour.

Chapter 7, 1:10:30 Sada urges Kichi to have sex with a 68-year-old woman, who pisses herself at the act's conclusion.

Chapter 8, 1:17:54 Kichi allows Sada to tie a belt around his neck which she tightens as they have sex.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT In the Realm of the Senses was critically acclaimed when it arrived at the 1976 London Film Festival, where it won the critics' prize. To avoid cuts, the film was shown in cinema clubs and was only first submitted to the BBFC in 1989.

The film was passed uncut for cinemas in 1991 - optical tinkering for that one scene notwithstanding - largely due to the wealth of critical opinion that had built up behind it. This would support a defence of artistic merit if any prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act was sought. (A friend who saw it at the time only said it confirmed her antipathy towards eggs.) Video/DVD release was officially achieved in 2000. (Virgin had released an uncertificated version in 1982 but it was withdrawn in 1984 when the Video Recordings Act became law; it demands BBFC approval for any release.)

Oshima went on to make such films as Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983), starring musicians David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto alongside director Takeshi Kitano, and Empire of Passion (1978), another eroticised telling of a true murder tale, from 1895, about a peasant woman and her younger lover, who conspire to kill the woman's husband. Afterwards they are pursued by his spirit and overcome with guilt.

KEY QUOTE 'Instead of a knife you should be holding something else' - Kichi

BONUS CURIO (1) To avoid prosecution in Japan while shooting, the film was listed as a French production and undeveloped footage shipped to France for processing and editing.

(2) When Oshima struggled to find anyone to play Sada Abe because of the controversial nature of the material his actress wife, Akiko Koyama, offered to take the role.

L'ennui: Adapt or die

DIRECTED BY Cédric Kahn, 1998

STARRING Sophie Guillemin (Cécilia), Charles Berling (Martin), Arielle Dombasle (Sophie)

CLASSIFICATION 18

RUN TIME117 mins, Artificial Eye

LANGUAGE French

COVER QUOTE 'A tale of enigmatic sexual obsession… dynamic and fascinating' - Time Out

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT I've always been underwhelmed by the work of writer Alberto Moravio, though much of it has been adapted for cinema, not least in The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970) and Le mépris (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963). What's astounding about this adaptation is how true it is to the source novel, La Noia (1960), down to the casting of the astonishing Sophie Guillemin, who stars opposite Gérard Depardieu in Jean Becker's trite My Afternoons with Margueritte (2010), which opens in UK cinemas this Friday. L'ennui was her film debut; she was nominated for the French film César awards for it and her follow up Harry, He's Here to Help (Dominik Moll, 2000) - both times in the most promising actress category.

THE PLOT Cruising a red light district, philosophy professor Martin spots an older man and a young woman fighting; the girl leaves and Martin discovers the man is a painter called Meyers. When Martin goes to visit Meyers in the latter's studio he is told Meyers died, while making love, and Martin encounters the woman, Cécilia. They begin a primarily sexual affair, exacerbated by Cécilia's infuriating calm and apparent lack of interest in anything but the most tangible experience ('I'm well so why worry about death') and Martin's jealousy, made worse when he discovers she is seeing an actor of her own age.

In the grip of breakdown, Martin takes sick leave from his job, and to dumping his news and emotions on his ex wife, Sophie. Finally, Martin starts giving Cécilia large amounts of money and asks her to marry him in an effort to preserve the relationship. She decides to leave on holiday with her boyfriend; Martin picks up a prostitute, imagining she is Cécilia, and crashes the car he is driving, with her in it. He wakes in hospital and asks the nurse to help him write a letter to Sophie in which he says he no longer has suicidal thoughts.

THE FILM Whole chunks of dialogue are lifted verbatim from the book La noia for the film L'ennui, and much more besides. Director Cédric Kahn does make a few tweaks, which I'll come to, but Sophie Guillemin, who was barely out of her teens when the film was made, is the absolute embodiment of Moravia's source novel.

In the book (I'll refer to Angus Davidson's translation for the New York Review Books version), the physique of her character, Cécilia, when first encountered, is described thus: 'She had a round face like a child; but it was a child that had grown too hastily and been initiated too soon into the experiences of womanhood. She was pale, with a slight shadow underneath her cheekbones which made her cheeks look hollow, and a mass thick, brown, curly hair all around her face. Her small mouth, childish both in shape and expression, reminded one of a bud that had withered prematurely on the bough without opening, and its corners were marked by two thin furrows... Finally her eyes, her best feature, were large and dark...'

The male narrator - Dino in the book, Martin onscreen - thinks she is no more than 15 years old (in the film she states explicitly that she is 17, though she has been in an affair for two years already) but is fooled by her figure, which he takes to be slender and childish but proves to be voluptuous. 'She had in fact a magnificent bosom, full, firm and brown, which did not, however seem in harmony with her torso - the slender, thin torso of an adolescent girl...' Guillemin mimics her walk, bosom thrust forward and belly pulled back, and the voice 'strangely expressionless, dry, precise'; she undresses, tramps on her skirt, even wipes herself vigorously with a towel after pissing, precisely as described by Moravia.

Martin's manner is immediately insistent with Cécilia, asking her extremely intimate questions, usually about her relationship with the painter Meyers. Martin is blunt: 'You don't seem to be the kind of woman to inspire a grand passion... to destroy a man.' Little does he know. Cécilia is impulsive in her attraction towards Martin: 'You're offering yourself as an object,' he tells her.

Cécilia is always ready for sex; she begins undressing the moment she enters his flat. 'Her only means of expression is sexual,' Martin complains to his ex wife. 'Sometimes, when she's lying there, legs apart, I find her cunt more expressive than her mouth.'

It is at the moment he decides to break with Cécilia that Martin becomes more interested in her: she misses an appointment for the first time, and it emerges she's seeing someone else. (There's a very strange scene where he follows Cécilia and her new boyfriend, Momo, almost under their noses; later he complains she didn't see him.) There is something of a dialectician manqué about Cécilia: when Martin asks her if she would continue to see him if he didn't have money she says she has already done so; she's not religious - 'If someone doesn't consider something then it doesn't exist.' Religion is, like so many other things, including aspects of her relationship with Meyers, dull, boring.

There are oddities in their romance: their last interaction is the first time we see them kiss passionately, otherwise Cécilia tends to just give Martin a peck on the cheek; they are only shown having straight sexual intercourse - when Martin picks up a prostitute who reminds him of Cécilia at the end of the film he demands a blow job. When he rings a man with whom he believes Cécilia is having an affair he demands: 'Does she give good head?' Her secrecy and infidelity are clearly not the only issues for Martin.

Kahn changes his central male character's profession from painter to philosophy professor - an alteration that gives some scenes the feel of Arnaud Desplechin's excellent Ma vie sexuelle (1996), including a very funny rant about Freud - and Dino's mother is replaced by an ex wife for Martin. As in Kahn's Red Lights (2004), adapted from the novel by Georges Simenon, it is the new scenes that sit least well in L'ennui, which is imbued with some of the thriller aspects of the other, later, film.

Finally it is Cécilia's apparent passivity that sends Martin mad: as they go to bed one afternoon he, deliberately, cruelly, asks her to first close the curtains, then a door, then to fetch his cigarettes, to check whether he's turned the gas off in the kitchen... It is played in the film exactly as described on paper. Sexually, Dino decides in the book, she 'had no feeling, and possibly even, no real sensuality, but merely a sexual appetite of which she herself was not entirely conscious although she submitted passively to its urgency.'

KEY SCENES Chapter 6, 27:21 Cécilia and Martin are seen having sex for the first time: she is shown in bed naked from behind, on top of Martin.

Chapter 9, 47:02 The couple have furious sex on the edge of the bed, this time with Martin on top. 'It was wonderful today,' says Cécilia, holding up three fingers to show the number of orgasms she had. Afterwards he ahs her again, standing up in the hallway.

Chapter 19 1:42:40 In a gaudy hotel room, the couple have sex for the last time in a variety of positions.

FURTHER VIEWING L'ennui is so fruitful due to the many other avenues of investigation it opens, not least those other adaptations of Moravia I mention at the beginning of this post, by Bertolucci and Godard. There are, too, those films featuring the remarkable Guillemin; Harry... is a very enjoyable film, German director Moll's best so far. Guillemin stands out as the best thing by far in My Afternoons... (originally titled La tête en friche), although there is a sense she may have been cast - as Depardieu's young lover - purely because of the sexual resonance with her character in L'ennui (it's very difficult to understand their relationship on any other terms).

There is, too, Red Lights, another dramatic depiction of male frustration, starring Jean-Pierre Darroussin and the icy Carole Bouquet. And, if you want to delve further into recent Simenon adaptations in a similar vein, you could check out Pierre Jolivet's In All Innocence (1998), starring Bouquet, again, alongside Gérard Lanvin, new favourite Guillaume Canet and the stunning Virginie Ledoyen (the last two going on to appear together in The Beach, 2000).

KEY QUOTE 'You're lying, that girl [Cécilia] doesn't exist!' - Sophie

Secretary: Assuming the position

DIRECTED BY Steven Shainberg, 2002

STARRING Maggie Gyllenhall (Lee Holloway), James Spader (E Edward Grey)

CERTIFICATION 18: Contains strong sexual theme, sex and language

RUN TIME 107 mins approx, Tartan

COVERLINE 'A comedy for everybody's who's been tied up at work'

WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT Hanky spanky with Jake's sister Maggie, who is reported to be about to star in film Hysteria about the invention of the vibrator.

THE PLOT Lee Holloway is discharged from a psychiatric clinic and enrols in a typing course, where she excels. Her first job interview is with lawyer E Edward Grey; when she arrives his previous secretary is walking out and the office is in disarray. Grey immediately treats Lee as if she's always worked there and she gets the job. There is a connection between them and he soon notices that Lee cuts herself. Lee's father is an alcoholic, her boyfriend, Peter, ineffectual, and her mother sits in her parked car all day waiting to take Lee home again.

After a particularly charged telling off from Grey over her typing mistakes, he calls Lee into his office where he spanks her for the first time. She comes to crave his discipline - he specifies what she can eat at home, she crawls around the office and eats from his hand - but he is frightened by his own needs. He fires her - 'You have to go or I won't stop' - in a scene that mirrors her arrival at his office.

Lee accepts Peter's marriage proposal but, when trying on the wedding dress, leaves Peter's family home and runs to Grey's office. She stages what is portrayed by local media as a hunger strike at his desk; a priest and her father are among those who visit to try and persuade her to come to her senses. Grey finally succumbs after three days and rescues her from her protest; they have sex.

THE FILM All the films I've included here so far feature sexual intercourse but Secretary tackles an area of sexuality, S&M, in a relatively mainstream movie. Mary Gaitskill's short story is the starting-off point for an indie romcom, albeit with a twist, in the hands of director Steven Shainberg.

Lee is reluctant to leave the institution at the film's start, life inside is simple and she misses the structure it affords. It is the day of her sister's wedding, and the mores of smalltown life, which Lee and Mr Grey break, loom large. At the reception, however, Lee is forced to confront her father's alcoholism and it is not long before she breaks out her kit of sharp implements and starts cutting herself (and, even, burning herself on her thigh with a hot metal kettle).

There's an immediate passion between them; Grey doesn't act on it straight away but he does tell Lee to stop cutting herself: 'You're over that now.' He begins to question her about her private life and Lee throws away her kit but when Grey spots her with her fiancé his feelings are expressed in anger: he criticises her typing, the way she dresses, plays with her hair or taps a foot. The aggression leads to the first occasion he calls her into his office and spanks her; they both realise they have crossed a boundary (not for the first time, in his case).

Maggie Gyllenhall's expression throughout the scene is a lesson: there's pain, of course, emotional hurt, disbelief. As the beating becomes harder both are panting with effort and arousal; they're left in a daze at its conclusion and Lee takes Mr Grey's hand momentarily in hers in affirmation. Gyllenhall's performance begins as wonderfully ungainly, she's all legs and no grace, while James Spader overplays the simpering, nervous Grey at first but soon moves to confidence.

Lee embraces their new relationship but Grey is humiliated by it; he exercises relentlessly in an effort to overcome his urges. When they split up, Lee contacts other dominant/submissives but is unsatisfied by their often jokey demands. Sex with Peter is no better: the first time they sleep together she insists it must be in the dark and she keeps her clothes on. 'I didn't hurt you, did I?' Peter asks, when he's come. 'No,' she answers, disappointed.

Where the film itself perhaps disappoints is in its ending: Mr Grey and Lee become part of small town life. Oddly, Lee doesn't go back to work for him but the real cop out is in their sex life: they start having one. On the occasion when Grey beats her bare bottom and wanks over her back in his office, he assures Lee he won't fuck her; 'I'm not into fucking.' The cementing of their relationship, however, arrives when they have intercourse.

KEY SCENES Chapter 6, 46:50 After a moment of indecision, Mr Grey makes Lee bend over his desk, palms flat on the table, a misspelled letter in front of her. He begins to spank her, hard, slowly at first, and then more quickly.

Chapter 8, 1:09:42 Grey again orders Lee to bend over his desk, and this time to pull up her skirt and pull down her tights and pants. He masturbates over her back; Lee then goes to play with herself in the bathroom and makes herself come.

Chapter 11, 1:37:23 Grey bathes a naked Lee and they begin to make love.

FURTHER VIEWING When Edward Grey and his new bride go on honeymoon, one of their acts is tellingly familiar to a scene in Belle de Jour (1967). Lee is tied to a tree and they have sex; in Luis Buñuel's film, Belle (Catherine Deneuve) is famously taken into the woods and beaten while tied to a tree.

KEY QUOTE 'Miss Holloway: good letter' - E Edward Grey

BONUS CURIO Prior to the film's release in Britain, critic Tom Charity suggested to Gyllenhall in an interview in Time Out that her character should have had a shaven pubis. She agreed.