User reviews

The initial concept for making this film was to offer three variations on the theme of love from three directors from three cultures. Or is the title 'Eros' more about the erotic than about love? Question unanswered by this triptych of minor works by some superb directors. The end result seems to be three streams of conscious thoughts looking for a reason to make it to the screen. With the brilliance of the three directors one would expect far more than the film delivers.

Wong Kar Wai presents the strongest of the three films in a dark story about a tailor who sublimates his desire for a courtesan (Gong Li) by making clothes for her - a 'servant' who finally reverses his role. The photography and interweaving of the characters is very beautiful to experience.

Steven Soderberg makes a testy little script about an ad man (Robert Downey, Jr) in therapy with a bizarre psychiatrist (Alan Arkin) exploring a recurring sensual dream. Shot is black and white the actors give it their all but the story is silly and becomes boring with all the distractions Soderberg works into the weak plot.

Antonioni attempts to breathe life into the old Italian movies of lover's spats and diversions and comes up with what feels like a script-less little mess of a movie bent solely on see-through blouses and nude cavorting on beaches.

As a triptych the film just doesn't become airborne, despite some very high powered, first rate directors. Much ado about very little. Grady Harp

One part brilliant, one part so-so, one part utter crap. Guess which one is which. OK, I'll help you out. In the order of appearance:

"The Hand" by Wong Kar-Wai is a solid piece of film-making, but nothing special. Let's just say the Master does not break any new ground with yet another short story of unrequited love. We've seen these characters before, they are not that interesting, and the story itself veers too far into melodramatic to my liking.

"Equilibrium" by Soderbergh is a witty, clever little nugget... and you won't soon forget an unorthodox shrink who indulges in a bit of voyerism on the side while treating his twitchy patient (a great appearance by Robert Downey Jr.)

The Whatever It Was Called by Antonioni is so bad, I could not believe my eyes. Well, unless you enjoy watching gorgeous girls writhing on a bed or dancing on the beach - naked. Oh, you think quite a few people would enjoy that? So did Antonioni. The whole thing looked like an extended male fantasy of a Maserati commercial. No characters or plot, not particularly interesting cinematography...It was just boring.

Bottom line, it was a strange idea to bring together three allegedly great directors on a single ticket, and it did not pay off. Go see it for the Soderbergh piece if nothing else. Wong Kar-Wai fans will be slightly disappointed, and Antonioni fans are beyond salvation.

"Eros" (2004) is the collection of three short films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (segment "Il filo pericoloso delle cose"), Steven Soderbergh (segment "Equilibrium") , and Kar Wai Wong (segment "The Hand"). Each film explores the always exiting and mysterious subjects of love, sexuality, and desire.

My favorite is "The Hand" – a sensual, emotional, powerful and very sad story about a young tailor who put the years of unrequited love for a beautiful call girl in an exquisite dress he created for her. He knew the exact measurements from touch. This segment is so great that I am ready to buy a DVD just to be able to see it often. It is a brilliant work of art from one of the greatest working directors now.

Steven Soderbergh's "Equilibrium" is a funny duet between two excellent actors, Alan Arkin as a voyeuristic shrink and Robert Downey Jr. as his patient who has a reoccurring dream about a beautiful woman.

Michelangelo Antonioni's segment "Il filo pericoloso delle cose" aka "The Dangerous Thread of Things" has been called the weakest in the trio. Many posters call it garbage, the total waste of time, the soft –porn made by a man who "got old and got horny". I personally did not find it a waste of time and if the man at 92 wants to make a little film that celebrates beauty and femininity – so be it. I feel that Michelangelo's segment is much deeper than it seems - even on the surface it is very attractive to look at.

What a treat! A film school in 104 minutes!

Forget what the detractors say about this. Most seem to think that none of it is erotic enough and few "like" the Soderbergh and Antonioni projects.

But you, dear viewer, you will know this as three explorations into how the eye creates the seductive impulse. And we have three masters, though I wish we also had Greenaway and Medem involved.

I assume that these three did not collaborate in any way. I also assume that the sponsors did not specify that the projects be erotic, rather that they explore what it means to be erotically engaged.

The first we see is by Kar-Wai Wong. His object of desire is Gong Li, who at 40 is still beautiful. She plays a prostitute who conspires to replace her old dressmaker with a young man. (The subtitles call him a tailor, to emphasize the tale that he spins.)

She engages his desire-driven imagination, which binds him to her and brings out his very best in terms of the dresses he creates. She weaves him and through the clothes, he weaves her. Toward the end, the image is polished with her ill and out of favor, and he still as obsessed and caressing a dress he made, moving his entranced hand inside it. It is his hand the title denotes.

At the very end, he tells a tale to his boss of his woman as back in the money, now fully his creation.

The second entry is amazing. Soderbergh is often capable of creating plots with circular reference. And since the very beginning, this notion of one reality creating another has been at his center. But this outdoes even "Full Frontal."

We have three dreams. One is the one we see first, a gauzy look through windows at an amazingly engaging scene: a beautiful redhead bathing and dressing. The dream starts as voyeurism through windows, but as is described later, our voyeur enters the dream as a participant. In the dream, he is on the bed dreaming.

Shift to a psychiatrist's office, where we meet the dreamer, played by Downey, one of our few folded actors. He is a clock designer obsessed with this dream. Over time, he is enticed to lay down and segue from talking about the dream to actually enter the dream. During this time, the psychiatrist begins his own voyeurism out the window.

Most reviewers saw this and thought the comic indifference was the point. Oh my. Their license to view films should be revoked.

As Downey dreams, we enter the third world, the third dream. He pulls a trigger suggested in the earlier segment and wakes into the dream where he is now married to his desire, and he goes to clock-designer work where his assistant is the same guy as the analyst, except he is the one obviously insecure.

All three worlds are set in the 50s. Which is the dream? Which is the source of pulling the desire into reality? Are dreams of desire cinematic or the other way around? Which of the paper airplanes connect?

The third project is widely dismissed as the obsessive sexual impetulance of an old, fading man.

The scene here is simple. A husband and wife have a spat. She is topless at first then puts on a transparent top as they go to a restaurant. There they briefly encounter another inhabitant of the beach resort where this is set. He visits this woman and they seduce each other, apparently a single event.

Later, the husband and wife are reconciled. Both woman happen to be nude on the beach, both seemingly in a sensual plateau. They encounter each other; more precisely the wife encounters the other asleep, casts a shadow on her while she stirs. They stare at each other silently. Neither, incidentally, is particularly attractive.

When the man and his affair begin, he has entered the "other" tower on the beach, after she wonders if he can stand her chaos, absolute chaos. Viewers seem to equate this with his famed trilogy about love from the sixties. Those were dumb films.

How could they forget "Blowup," an essay on how cinematic memory bends or even defines reality. And how he stretched that into wonderful folded space in "Beyond the Clouds."

You have to do some work here. You have to know that this is not about sex, or the erotic figure. Nor even anything at all having to do with examining a relationship. It is all about how perception defines the situation, moved erotically.

Guess no one want to do the work. But if you are interested in film, you'll want to view these three notions of where the eye of love sits. With Wong, it is in the present, Soderbergh in the remembered and Antonioni the expected.

I prefer Wong's world so far as experience. He even takes it as far as not having a script, but making up the movie as he shoots. Love should ideally be erotic, and the invention of that world should be one you coweave with your partner, dressing each other into the miracle.

But these other fellows have hypnotic appeal as well.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

It's always a tricky thing to comment on these 'omnibus' films, where world-renown directors come together to make little films combined as one film. The two that are likely most well known to American audiences, of most recent as twenty years, are New York Stories (featuring Scorsese, Coppola, and Woody) and Four Rooms (Anders, Rockwell, Rodriguez, and Tarantino). None of those films are total masterpieces, due to the fact that there are always un-even bits by the filmmakers, even in the better segments. Eros is no exception, but I would argue that there has been some over-load of flack against the short co-written and directed by 90-something year-old Michelangelo Antonioni. His segment has been claimed by almost all the critics and reviewers (on this site and for the press) has been claimed as a waste of time, as total soft-core porn, the ideals of an old man wanting one last grip on his libido. I didn't find his segment to be a waste, although it is one of his stranger, more enigmatic films in his sixty year career, and it isn't as fascinating as it used to be.

The other two segments are little classics in and of themselves for the younger of the two filmmakers. Wong Kar Wai delivers a touching, sad romantic tale of a tailor's apprentice who has a curiosity about a woman who does something erotic with him on a first visit (hence the title of the segment, The Hand, though it's not as pat a term as might be imagined. The actors involved are all marvelous, and the style in how Kaw-Wai sets up his shots demands attention, despite it being unconventional. The acting is very natural, the music used comes in at just the right moments for emotional contact (you almost anticipate it, and when it comes, it's powerful), and the ending wraps the story up rather fittingly. It goes to show that Kar-Wai might be the most skilled at making romantic-dramas in China, or at least is the most popular.

Steven Soderbergh, likely around the time he directed the slightly off-putting Ocean's Twelve, concocted this sort of comedy of manners, as he says, "so I could have my name on a poster with Antonioni." It stars Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin as a salesman and a psychiatrist respectively, and Downey's character is anxious about his job and, more importantly, about a woman in his dream. Arkin is hilarious in his role as a man who would much rather look out the window with binoculars at someone we do not see in the short. But his physical mannerisms, as Downey goes through his dream to confront himself (filmed in nice black and white, by the way), makes the scene all the more worthwhile. The last shots, jump cuts, of a paper airplane flying out the window are filmed with a fine touch of whimsy. There is also a solid, painterly use of blue in one particular part of the dream scene early on in the segment.

Then we come to Antonioni. First off, let one address the good qualities, or at least the fair, expectable qualities, that come with many of Antonioni's films. In a sense, he's hearkening back to his classic 'trilogy' (L'Aventurra, La Notte, The Eclipse), where a married couple is going through a crisis, and they spend a lot of time not saying anything to one another, and looking out at beautiful Italian landscapes and beaches. In a way, I almost wish this was a feature-length film as opposed to a more or less half hour short. I wanted to know more about these people, about what they do, or what they were doing or going to. But there seem to be two big flaws in the segment (the nudity didn't bother me- there were actually a couple of memorable shots, one of which just a woman's foot on a bed). One was with the music. Some have said that the film is Antonioni's closest trip to soft-core porn. While I would class his directorial eye and style miles above anything on after-midnight Cinemax, the music by Enrica Antonioni and Vinicio Milani is a complete contrast of the music more associated with the director's work, which is either spellbinding in it's atmosphere, or haunting with the usage of rock and roll. Here he uses the music, electronic and with preposterous lyrics, in the more 'erotic' scenes. The other flaw is that, because of the film's short length, there isn't enough time as usual to build up the enigmatic stance of the story. The climax involves the two lead women (one the wife, the other the stranger adulteress) completely nude looking at each other on the beach. While it is interesting to have this image open for interpretation, it is also frustrating in ways that weren't so in the endings to the other Antonioni 'human mysteries'.

I understood some of the implications, but I didn't get the sense of what was lost or what was gained or omitted like in the other two segments. Everything shot and acted looks sweet and tight and concentrated in the segment, still a technical pro, but what exactly is the point? Still, I would not have walked out during the middle of anything by Antonioni, and this, by default the weakest of the bunch, should be open to more interpretation than what Ebert described as "an embarrassment". I felt the eye and mind of an artist working still during "The Dangerous Thread of Things", and my only wish was that I could understand more than what I was seeing and experiencing. Perhaps his segment, like Kaw-Wai's and Soderbergh's, are left up to that interpretation for a purpose. I'll likely want to see all three segments sometime in the future, and maybe get a better take on what eluded me or what enticed me. But, at the least, I didn't leave the theater feeling entirely cheated.

Grade (averaged): B+

And a very bad last 1/3 by Michelangelo Antonioni. I saw this movie last night at the Elgin Theatre at the Toronto International Film Festival and people walked out after seeing the Wong Kar Wai and Steven Soderbergh segments. I find it hard to rate this movie as a whole so I'll rate each segment of the movie separately. First, there was Wong Kar Wai's short film, titled "The Hand", starring Gong Li and Chang Chen. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the movie, because to me, this definitely portrays what true love is about. It is a very sad story, told with great camera work and the colors were amazing, thanks to Christopher Doyle, the cinematographer. The lighting, soundtrack, and mood were also very enjoyable and complimented each other wonderfully. I rated this part of the movie a 9/10. Then came Soderbergh's short film "Equilibrium". This was more of a comedy, which was very much welcomed since the first part of the film was so sad. Again, the cinematography here was great too, although the story's plot wasn't as easy to follow as Wong's story. The symbolisms were a bit too much, in my personal opinion, but it was still a great short film. I gave this part a 7/10. Then came Antonioni's short movie, which I don't even remember the name of. The plot was almost nonexistent and to me, it was more of an excuse for porn than anything else. Like my friend said, it was as if Antonioni came to America and asked someone what their impression of foreign film was, and made it into this film. I particularly disliked the excessive amount of nudity in this segment of the film, since to me, it posed no greater meaning or purpose. The dialogue also had some of the cheesiest one liners I've seen since Van Helsing. I rated this part a 4/10. Overall, I'd say this movie was a 7/10 mainly because Wong Kar Wai and Steven Soderbergh pulled the average up.

Wong Kar Wai does a reprise of In the Mood for Love. A sadder, but wiser (and shorter) version. Rich sumptuous imagery.

Sonderburgh does a cute little comedic turn. Alan Arkin and Robert Downey have a surprising chemistry. At least someone will still make movies with Downey

Antonioni does a soft porn film. I think it was a great way to get handsome women to take off their clothes and sooth his old age. Naked on the beach playing in the waves. And even horses for the girls. For the men there is a really swell new Maseratti convertible with leather seats and side mirrors that swivel in for tight spots. Really - no fraud like an old fraud.

I rather enjoy watching short films. Like short stories, there's seldom room for more than one good idea, so that idea has to be done well--in the hands of a skilled director, this is an opportunity rather than a limitation. Eros is a collection of three such films, ostensibly sharing a similar theme.

Wong Kar Wai's "The Hand" is the first film, and is a premiere example of what a short film can achieve. A concise story about a tailor and a high class prostitute, "The Hand" distills the love/lust theme into a beautiful, intoxicating gem. It is by far the best film of the bunch, perhaps even one of the director's finest.

Steven Soderbergh's "Equilibrium" is the second film in the trio, and features a few shots of a naked woman and a long and unrelated dialog between Robert Downey Jr and Alan Arkin. As far as I can tell the film has vanishing little to do with love, lust, passion or sex--and not much else to say about anything. Soderbergh, who's often hit-or-miss, misses big time with this convoluted short.

Michelangelo Antonioni's "Dangerous thread" (or however it is properly translated) is quite different from the previous two films. It is certainly on message, featuring lots of full frontal nudity and some sex, but doesn't really have much of a story. It actually feels like it is much closer to succeeding than "Equilibrium", if only because it seems to fit comfortably within its time constraints, but the vacuous plot leaves you bored.

In the end Eros is a missed opportunity. After the first film you expect a beautiful tapestry of ideas and perspectives, but it never materializes. Nevertheless, the first film is well worth watching--easily justifying a rental or screening.

Sadly to say, the dullest and meaningless movie I've ever seen! Especially the parts directed by Antonioni and Soderbergh. The one of Wong Kar Wai was at least watchable and had an actual story. There is no way I can explain how disappointed I was having lost almost 2 hrs my life to watch this. What were the creators thinking?! No story line, no meaning, nothing, simply nothing. OK, I could have expected it by Antionioni but I hoped that at least Soderbergh could have made something better. Obviously, the "art film" obsession has invaded Hollywood too. Or I must have misread something from between the lines. Even though I'm pretty convinced there wasn't even a sign of lines either...

I saw this film in Greece where the sequence is: Antonioni, Sodenberg, Kar Wai. The Antonioni film felt a bit indifferent but one has only to pay attention to some details to understand that this is a work of a genius like Antonioni who has great fun. Utopia, poetry, mythology and all that which eros is made of, parade here. Those who are disturbed by nudity should come to terms with their body. "Equilibrium" has some intelligent interplays between dream and reality and great acting. Sodenberg is trying to do a little too much with colour and the eros theme is a bit too subtle. Kar Wai has found a successful formula in creating tension, atmosphere, and passion in narrow, dark corridors and in the 50s time zone. This was the only film out of the tree that penetrates to the audience and has really something to say. The future belongs to the youngster.

Reading the back of the DVD case - and even the summary on this site - would lead you to believe that this movie would be an exploration of love and sexuality by three well known world directors. You would think that it would be sensual, thought provoking, emotional, and given the title certainly erotic, and most of all, good. But sadly it wasn't any of these things.

There were a few redeeming features - the first short was beautiful to watch and the actors were well chosen, the second had some bits of wonderful acting and interesting photography, and...um...for the third, only the location was interesting.

In the end, don't believe the "plot summary" on this site, or the description on the DVD. Not only is it misleading, but some is just plain inaccurate. The only thing that delivered on its promise in this movie was the title screen that strung the movie together - which connected to the idea of what the movie SHOULD be, instead of what it actually was.

As a last note, if you're still determined to watch this DVD, you may as well numb yourself further by watching the "Michaelangelo Eye to Eye" short in the Special Features. Antonionio (I think) wanders into a church in Italy and stares interminably at parts of statues created by the sculptor Michaelangelo; at least those are real art. Too bad the director didn't learn anything from his namesake...

For fans of Wong Kar-Wai, his segment "The Hands" is a must-see, as it ranks among his best, most fully-realized works. A truly stunning piece of work that not only summarizes everything great about his film-making, but which is also more focused and less indulgent than some of his more recent work. Unfortunately, the other two segments, from Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni respectively, don't fair nearly as well. Soderbergh's piece, titled "Equilibrium", is a tediously self-conscious exercise in cerebral cleverness, typical of his attempts at uncommercial "art" film-making (as opposed to his usual faceless Hollywood products). It is basically the cinematic equivalent of an obnoxious faux-intellectual laughing at his own "witty" joke. It only further proves what a truly cold, soulless filmmaker Soderbergh is that his segment of an anthology film supposedly based around the theme of sex is completely devoid of sensuality of any kind. Antonioni's closing segment (baring the appropriately pretentious title "The Dangerous Thread of Things") fairs slightly better, but not enough to prevent it from being a sad near self-parody from what was once one of cinema's leading lights. It is tempting to blame Antonioni's stroke (which rendered him wheelchair-bound and mute in 1985) for his piece's dirty old man sensibility (parts of it approach bad soft-core porn), but even that doesn't excuse the film's sheer almost laughable (if it weren't so tragic) pretentiousness. It could nearly pass as a parody of obtuse, incomprehensible European art films. That said, the film is still more than well worth watching for Wong Kar-Wai's film alone. Since it comes first in the chronology, you can easily watch it and then turn it off before the other two.

One shudders at the disrespect shown here for the master of cinema Antonioni. Clearly one of the five or so greatest directors that has ever lived.

His segment is easily the most worthwhile of the three. Wong and Soderbergh provide bland mainstream narratives. Antonioni, whilst not on his 60s form, still sculpts with cinema like no- one else. The acting is stylised, disturbingly so, but not without intention. The composition is gorgeous. The meanings teasingly subtle. There is an indefinable wholesomeness, not a full meal perhaps, but a gorgeous miniature that satisfies the palette and leaves a lingering aftertaste. Yes, there is also some nudity - what are we, five year olds?

Watching this movie was a strange experience. Going on the viewer was improving his vision. Antonioni puts on the screen too much difficulties and considering his episode as something good is not so easy. Too much rhetoric, but the content? It's not possible (even if Antonioni can, or better, he was able to) to build a story based only on landscapes and naked figures..Pretentious (and actors' voices are awful as the dubbing). Sodebergh makes his job (a little bit "squeaky clean"). The idea of "the character watched by someone invisible" is good but it tastes like a dejà vu. Also the photography is cool. But Sodebergh seems too often "cool" and nothing else. The real sensation is Wong Kar Wai, whose episode "the hand" seems a continuation of some "moods" seen in "2046". The way Gong Li and the tailor know themselves for the first time is something sublime.

There's is really no way to rate this film, since the quality of each piece is so diverse.

"The Hand" was marvelous, WKW decided to turn back towards the subdued after the cacophonous '2046', which is a great move. He has redeemed himself with this brilliant short, which masterfully flaunts his talents along with Christopher Doyles. It has all the elements of a WKW piece, and each step was perfection. The acting was also superb. I was surprised that Zhang Zheng was able to shine and barter next to Gong Li. I wasn't impressed by him in CTHD, but I am now. I saw Eros because of this segment, and I was far from disappointed. 10/10

Sodenberg's piece was witty and subtle. Again, solid acting. The script is very smart, and it certainly piques your curiosity for the movements off screen and creates an interesting sense of dualism. The ending shot was very interesting. 9/10

Antoninni's segment was as everyone else has mentioned already - Atrociously bad. Everything was discombobulated to the point where you simply give up midway and just laugh at the random imagery and nudity on screen. Random shots that seem to emphasize nothing, actions that have no purpose. I just had to laugh out loud in exasperation midway when the actress parading around in a see-through top rolled a wine glass on the floor. Nonsequiturs such as these fill the half hour short, where they are never revisited or referenced for the rest of the film. Although I was sufficiently confused, at the end I've become so indifferent and disinterested to even care to rethink the plot anymore.

This collection of three short films by three "world class" directors is a mixed bunch. With two interesting footnotes to the careers of their directors, while the final one is simply put one of the worst films ever made and nail in the coffin of its director's career.

The first film is Wong Kar Wai's The Hand. Its about a women and her tailor over the course of several years. Its about smoldering desire and the meaning of love/lust, and what we do for the objects of said desire. Its a very good film, but not really up to Wai's best. It kept reminding me of In the Mood for Love.In some ways this maybe the best of the three, though I found I never really connected to it, even though I could relate to it. This is probably the only one that really belongs in a film called Eros.

Steven Soderbergh's Equilibrium follows. Its a humorous look at a man who's being haunted by a reoccurring dream. In desperation he goes to a shrink who helps him unlock the meaning of the dream. This is a pretty good sketch of a film that only falters at the conclusion. If you can forgive the poorly done ending you'll come out of it amused.

The third film is by Michelangelo Antonioni. To say that this film is a complete waste of film is an understatement. Its the story of a couple who are fighting. The man has an affair and then the women meet. Its horrible, its pointless. Its pretentious. I can't say enough bad about it. Its bad enough to force one to reconsider the over rated career of its director and to ask for his Oscar back. Its terrible but the only good thing about the movie is we get to see the two female stars sans clothes. This final piece is one of the worst films I've ever seen.

The last film aside, the real problem with this movie is that the three movies don't really fit together. The tone and style of the various parts don't blend together well enough to be one film. Unless you are going to stop between each film, the bleed over from each movie is going to effect the others. This isn't bad, its just not the best way to view the two good films of the set.

Ultimately I'd say if you're interested in any of the directors give it a shot, or more precisely the first two are worth renting or seeing on cable, while the final film should simply be burned. The films come off more as doodles than as fully fleshed out movies, but considering none is longer than 40 minutes thats okay. An interesting attempt.

I back up other viewers, but give a lower overall rating because sitting through them all was such a chore. "The Hand" has real poignancy, beauty, and was by far the most finished of the movie-lets, but it was sooooo slooooow. It had to go first, audiences would have rebelled later on. The Soderburg picked up the pace, and Arkin was a low-brow treat, though the piece had a "Sat. Night Live" sketch quality. The Antonioni was perfectly ridiculous in the way that Playmate videos are ridiculous. but made even less sense than they do--I have to agree with the "horny old man" jeers. Aren't he and Hef about the same age? One good thing was the paintings used in the credits of each movie; these had some beauty and class of their own. Didn't catch the name of the painter.

really amazed to see so many people putting up comments on WKW's short in this short trilogy.

among many comments posted here on WKW, some claim he's done another masterpiece and some claim the romance within and some even analyzed the connection between "this masterpiece" and and that "2046" and they sound all exhilarated or exhilarating....

but being a Chinese audience, i must say i never really understand well any one of WKW's movies except the one CHUNGKING EXPRESS. Even this Chongqing express was only made more viewer friendly to me with the participation of Faye Wong and Andy Lau, the two constant icons of Hongkong popular culture in the last 10 years or so. But just as the title Chungking Express bears no special meaning to any Chungking native like me, the whole film is of the typical WKW style: formalism in priority.

and when back on WKW's short, i admit that i felt a bit fed up with the reappearing Chinese gowns since IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE and the similar rhythm and backdrop of the 1960's ...All these elements seem ostentatiously formalistic in that the Chinese gown is no more than an instrument to bring out the artificially nostalgic and (to many western viewers,) exotic oriental feel and that the 1960's in Hongkong is something so hollow that those who watch could hardly have any idea of what the 1960's in Hongkong was like and those who have the ideas might rarely watch and hardly understand this film when they are at least at their 5o.

Some supporting critics of WKW comment "..of course, the dim dramatical content and the sadness in the boring slowness of this film have also become the target of criticism for many traditionally formalized critics who regard film, like writing or painting, as (means of expression of profoundity). What these critics can not stand about this film is that there no single icon or symbol in this film for them to amplify or analyze" (p.51, {a hundred years of Chinese cinema}, special issue of Film Watching Magazine, china) And if there is really nothing for those "traditionally formalized" critics to analyze from WKW's film, then the above supporting analysis should come from nowhere but the nothingness of WKW's own creations.

one should be open and tolerant enough towards formalism and nothingness, but what about formalism and nothingness in disguise?

Wong's film seems to come from the same universe as In the Mood for Love and 2046, which does give you the feeling of been-there-done-that. But, still, it is beautiful and nearly as hypnotic as those two films. Soderbergh's film is slight, but highly amusing. Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin are fantastic. Antonioni's segment is pretty worthless. It feels like European softcore art-porn. But, really, would it surprise anyone that his film is the least of this bunch? As far as cinematic history is concerned, Soderbergh shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence as Wong, and Wong probably not quite in the same sentence as Antonioni. But, let's face it, Antonioni hasn't made a good film in three decades. I'd still suggest watching Eros for the first two segments. If you can keep your curiosity in check, just shut it off before the third begins.

3 shorts, 3 directors, 3 stories, 3 cultures, 3 streams of consciousness, 1 theme - love

I guess the story between Wong Kar Wai & Gong Li, although dark and sad, hits the bulls eye. It is about a tailor and a courtesan & the bond that develops between them. The setting, the photography and the mood gets to you and is engrossing.

Steven Soderberg's section has Downey, who features as an ad man and Alan Arkin who is his therapist. Downey is in therapy to explore his recurrent his recurrent sensual dream. Most part of this section is in B&W. Downey & Arkin do give their best but the story is not crisp and fails to make the connection.

Antonioni has recreated the love life filled with spats and distractions. This one has the most nudity that is on your face. This is the most messed up part. I wish there were more emphasis on the story too.

A lot could have been done here. after all Eros has 3 very good, capable directors at the helm. I was left wondering why they did not make the best of a lovely theme.

Wong Kar Wai's segment is excellent. It's amazing how sexually charged it is, especially considering there is no nudity and no graphic scene of intercourse of any kind. Gong Li is striking, and the piece practically oozes ambiance.

Soderbergh's is cute and funny, but more like a long joke than a film, and is about as "erotic" as watching Seinfeld. If not for the welcome presence of Alan Arkin, it would be difficult to handle.

Antonioni's is a dull mess, and his idea of eroticism is apparently copious amounts of random nudity. The ADR on his piece is also very poor, and the acting not much better.

8/10 for Wai's, 6/10 for Soderbergh's, and 3/10 for Antonioni's. If you're looking for an "erotic" film experience, stop watching after the first piece.

"The hand" of Wong Kar Wai is better than two left, Doylce always making best scenes, dying of his dreamy color <3.