Reviews

Sacred Sex is a seat-squirmer of a film — one of the most irritating films I have ever seen. I went along with my wife hoping for entertainment, maybe a bit a spice, and came out so cross I couldn't get to sleep for all the wrong reasons.

The central characters are real-life, middle-class, self-indulgent, pseudoscientific, well-heeled (so-to-speak) sex therapists, who run a kind of Butlins for the emotionally and sexually bewildered. They cruise around with microphones like creepy evangelists, encouraging cosmic, cranial-based orgasms (one woman made the same noise that one normally makes when something mouldy is discovered at the back of the fridge), and wrenching emotions out of the punters in the name of spirituality.

The interviewees are invariably living in extreme affluence, the key words are "energy" and "spirituality." There are oceans of tears, some spontaneous female-rites initiation dances, and a chance for the men to learn to make love ten times a day without ejaculating (too much like having Guy Fawkes and only lighting the blue bit on the fireworks...).

There was one enormously redeeming feature. In a sort of parallel sub-plot we meet Annie Sprinkle, a porn star and ex-prostitute, with a huge heart and enormous honesty. Her connection with the film is that she has dabbled in the Tantric Sex approach which the film is trying to sell us. However, she is delightfully relaxed about the spiritual side of it, preferring to take a "whatever turns you on must be okay" attitude. She has obviously enjoyed some extra experience through the technique, and is happy to add it to her bag of tricks — an a pretty impressive bag it is too.

She is worth sitting through the drivel for. The irony of it is that while the film makers have used her to spice up the production, she ends up making the central figures look extremely shallow. They appear so much less honest, gutsy, and just plain kind, than she does. She is great. The rest is awful, but you can't walk out otherwise the whole theatre will think you're a prude.

Truly, Madly, Deeply is a film which deals with bereavement, and the slow recovery after the death of a partner. It is interesting in that it uses the paranormal as a dramatic device very successfully. The return of the lover as a ghost, the subsequent breakdown in this unlikely relationship, and the final inevitable split in favour of a "real" relationship are dealt with in a considerate, humorous and plausible way.

It charts the healing process in which the main character uses the presence of her supernatural lover as legitimate emotional support. It is a very emotional film, but not a deliberate tear-jerker, though you should take a box of Kleenex along with the Jaffas. There's some good music in the film too — not like Sacred Sex. It was all tinkles and swooping synthesised chords which only added to the feeling of being trapped in a lift with a bunch of naked New Agers with the Muzak left running.

Junk Science

A book review in Nature by James Randi, and a piece in New Scientist by Ariadne, both recently drew attention to "junk science," the evidence given in court by so-called expert witnesses.

Anyone can claim to be a scientist, and American lawyers are known to shop around for someone, however crackpot, who will testify on behalf of their clients. As an example, a soothsayer "lost her powers" after a CAT scan. After hearing from an "expert", the jury awarded her a cool million in damages (this was thrown out on appeal).

Charles Chaplin, blood group O, was alleged to have fathered a B-group child on a woman of blood group A. Despite scientific evidence that this is impossible, the Californian judge, influenced by junk science, ruled against Chaplin.

The subject of Randi's review is Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom, by Peter W

Huber (Basic Books, 1991). The author discusses, from an American point of view, what is wrong and why, and suggests how the situation might be improved.

Bernard Howard