Identity Crisis: Sense8's NSFW Evolutions
Friday, June 12, 2015 at 10:00PM What to do about the Wachowskis? Lana and Andy started so strong and sexy with their lesbian grift noir Bound (1996) - which remains their best work -- and then captured the whole world's attention with the reality-bending sci-fi The Matrix (1999). The global success of that influential movie seemed to give them carte blanche and blank checks going forward and the freedom doesn't appear to have been good for them; the size of their ambitions and geektastic dumb/coolness of their concepts (like college students getting stoned and talking superheroes and theology all night long) is undermined every time by messy storytelling. That's so strange for filmmakers who started with such a tightly constructed narrative piece like Bound.
Daryl Hannah is the Octomom !!!
Tim will be reviewing Sense8 proper for us when he's finished with the first season but for now I want to talk about what I do love about this aggravatingly slow series and that is its radical sexuality. I've never seen the like in American mainstream film or television. NSFW business after the jump...
Tell me this is a joke.
No. sorry, Lito. This show takes its sexcapades very seriously.
Sense8 is built around eight characters in different cities who are connected in a psychic "cluster" to each other and able to psychically and physically and even mnemonically communicate (they seem to share flashbacks from a time before their connected "birth" -- Daryl Hannah is the Octomom!). Halfway through the series they haven't really vocalized the term "sensates" as an identifying label or superhero team name yet so what they are is derived entirely from the plot synopses that Netflix provides. I'm about 7 hours into the series and feel as if I'm 6 hours ahead of the characters and that is a huge problem is what I'm saying.
The Sensates: Wachowski repertory member and Asian film star Doona Bae (The Host, Air Doll) plays Sun the mistreated daughter of a very wealthy family in Seoul who happens to be super dangerous in a fight though she's the tiniest wisp of a thing with no visible muscle tone; Brian J Smith (Gossip Girl, Stargate Universe) plays good cop Will from Chicago where the sensates "mother" kills herself in the first few minutes of the pilot after "giving birth" to them and he's sucked immediately into the mystery due to his curiousity and investigative resources; supersexy Spaniard Miguel Ángel Silvestre (Almodóvar's I'm So Excited) plays Lito, a macho Mexican action star who is secretly a big homo; Moody German star Max Riemelt (so good in Free Fall - available for instant watch on Netflix) plays Wolfgang, an ambitious thief in Berlin; British actress Tuppence Middleton (probably best known as the flirt in The Imitation Game who provides their "Eureka!" moment) sports a convincing Icelandic accent as Riley, a DJ in trouble with drug dealers; British actor Aml Ameen (small roles in The Maze Runner, and Lee Daniels The Butler) plays Capheus, a bus driver in Nairobi who is only trying to care for his sick mother which gets him into a lot of hot water with powerful men; Tina Desai (from the Exotic Marigold movies) plays Kala, a religious Indian girl entering an arranged marriage to a wealthy businessman; and Jamie Clayton, a transgender American actress, plays a hacker named "Nomi" who is the first sensate to be targeted by the Big Bad shady organization that wants all eight of them dead and/or lobotomized.
But let's talk about the sex, the hot hot sex.
The very first sex scene in the show is a sweaty orgasmic and hot romp between two women. As it turns out one is trans and one is cis and they've been together a long time. The scene ends with the trans woman Nomi saying "you just fucked my brains out".
I didn't need to see this shot to punctuate it (though I laughed that the dildo was rainbow colored) but the show needed to show it I guess.
'Fair warning to binge-watchers,' it seems to be saying, 'we won't be pulling any punches.'
The most radical element of the series is surely its sly paradoxical thesis that sexuality, gender and identity are innate and steady and evolving and mutable. See, the sensates prove that the more "evolved" among us have no barriers when it comes to empathy and identification with those entirely unlike themselves (well except for their beauty but it's television what do you expect?). The scenes are shot multiple times and cross-cut so that we see these very different actors living out each other's experiences to show their psychic connections. As the series progresses this also effects the sex scenes.
We begin to see the straight characters experiencing pleasure from gay sex (and vice versa) as in this scene from Episode 6 (the raunchiest episode) wherein the cop is just innocently lifting weights and suddenly he's transported into a sexual situation with Lito, the closeted actor with the equally hot boyfriend.
And from there it only gets crazier as the sensates enter into a virtual orgy of a sorts in a bathhouse where Wolfgang swims and relaxes and occasionally picks up women to f***. The orgy seems to spring forth from Lito & Nomi's having sex with their significant others at the same time. Suddenly all the characters (well, most of them at least) are feeling it. So you get trans on cis action, lesbians with gays, gays with straights and so on. Everyone gets a happy ending... even the characters not directly involved who don't really know what hit them.
After everyone orgasms, Wolgang is on his own again.... just hanging out, completely unphased by the polysexual orgy he was just participating in.
And speaking of Wolfgang. One of his bathhouse visits coincides with Kala's wedding so he basically enters it dripping wet and naked. The camera and editing do that typical thing of hiding his business at every opportunity in a long scene until suddenly they don't, making the scene both in-your-face dramatic and weirdly comic.
No, YOU spent 40 minutes photoshopping together screenshots from a pan up..
Kala looks down at Wolfgang's junk and promptly faints, thereby stalling her actual nuptials. (Kala later even prays to her elephantine God about her German visitor with "the large trunk".)
So the series is blessed with not only sex positivity (the only negative byproduct of any of the sex scenes is a potential blackmail situation) but a very healthy sex drive which it indulges often. Though there are infrequent flashes of humor about the sex, it takes the act seriously. It's worth noting that the two serious relationships in the show are both homosexual relationships and are shown to be life-enriching, carnally-intense, and deeply-romantic. The gay and lesbian characters even view their sex as sacred as when Lito tells Nomi that taking his lover into his mouth for the first time was like holy communion.
It's all very radical for television, really.
If only the rest of the show weren't so messy and meandering and repetitive. I could probably talk about this show for hours but the storytelling is so slow and metered out (about exactly one truly important thing / reveal seems to happen every 52 minutes) that as befits its multiple-identity nature, binge-watching might not be the best way to do it. Instead place 12 screens in a circle around your room and press play on each episode simultaneously. The series will only last 60 minutes or so and it will undoubtedly give off the same global carnal silly serious spiritual dangerous ambitious wtf vibe with far less of a time commitment.
And it will make exactly as much sense.
Reader Comments (20)
This sounds like a hot fuckin' mess. I'm in! Where do I tune in? What happens? ;-)
Mareko -- it's on Netflix.
Speaking of weirdly comic: my favorite part of the orgy scene was actually the very end, when Capheus (who I don't think we see taking part in the actual sex) is watching a Jean Claude Van Damme movie and looking around very confused, as he nonchalantly adjusts himself.
But yeah, it's a deranged, weird, wonderful mess. I'm extremely happy it exists. I don't know that I'm "happy" that I personally watched it. Much to process.
Still have a few episodes left so I haven't really read anything on the show for fear of even getting minorly spoiled, but I kinda love it. Yes, it's a hot mess, but in a way that TV (and film) should be more often. Plus I love all of the characters so even when the plot becomes glacial/redundant, I'm still spending time with characters I love.
i love, love, love, love, love, love, love this show! It's an ambitious, messy mindf*ck!
Oh, Miguel Ángel Silvestre! Does he have a frontal?
This is the BEST show - I don't even care how sloppy the narrative is or the unnecessary focus on queen of the basics, RIley. It's just so compelling, so sex-positive, so progressive - I can't take it. I do find the individual character arcs to be super riveting and I think it's filmed spectacularly. Tbh - it just sounds like they need someone to rewrite their scripts (without touching the sex scenes).
I agree with everything you said about he show, Nathaniel. It seems like every episode I find myself saying "Ok, I give up on this show," and yet I'm on the eighth episode so I guess there's just enough to keep me tuned in. It's simultaneously really engrossing, frustrating, progressive, sexy...and did I mention frustrating?!
Not sure if I hate this show or love it. Made it all the way to the end so enjoyed it enough for that but I don't know if Id call it "good". It's biggest problem is that I did not care about half the characters (Kalas arc is particularly boring) and tgey get SO MUCH screen time. I only cared about Rooni, Will & Sun and kinda Riley and would usually fastforward all other characters stories (except the sex scenes of course.) Also only half the characters had anything to do with the central mystery/investigation which is part of what made the Kala, Wolfgang, Miguel & Capheus stories seem like unneeded filler. Like most Wachowski projects, some absolutely rivetting moments inside an overstuffed vehicle that often veers into cliche.
I agree. Intriguing concept, good cinematography but the series needs a better script.
I wish the Wachowskis would get a writer who can collaborate with them and streamline their creativity into a coherent, unified vision. Everybody needs an editor, no matter how good their ideas are.
That said, the show is at its absolute best when the sensates are in contact with each other. The show sings when two are in contact with one another, whether it's Sun kicking ass, Nomi and Lito sharing their grief or Capheus being the best getaway driver ever. It's even better when it takes that link into unexpected places, like the orgy above, or my absolute favorite sequence, when Lito is experiencing phantom menstruation symptoms from Sun and how the show contrasted how both characters dealt with it. The link between Sun and Lito wasn't fleshed out, but the subtext was interesting -- why is it that Lito is the one who's there when Sun is feeling vulnerable?
looks interesting tho
I'm enjoying the show, but can I just say how stupid it is that they don't trust us enough to depict the characters in their own languages the entire time (which is important and many of the actors don't actually seem that comfortable speaking English).
arkaan -- nitially that was my main feeling too but then i discovered that many of the actors i had that concern with were actually british so... lol. maybe it's just stiff acting?
Heh. It's not just the major roles - it's the minor ones that really bother me. The show lacks versimilitude in that regard. I'm still enjoying it a lot more than you, I think - I love the Wachowski's messiness, I think.
I really enjoyed the show despite its slow-mo storytelling and the messiness pertaining to scenes sometimes bleeding aimlessly into other scenes. I'm especially drawn to a few characters which I'm glad were not laid out bare in the first or second episode unlike many TV shows that tend to do that in their pilot. Episodes 9 and 10 were so well made - melancholic, spiritual, complex. Compared to my binge on Grace and Frankie, this one was far more satisfying and rewarding. Let's hope there's a season 2!
Episode 4 was the first truly great episode. I loved the sex scene in episode 6 because it says so much it hurts my brain to think about it. But the last 3-4 episodes are phenomenal. Especially the last, tag-team episode, but the concert also left me breathless. The show as a whole is messy and clunky and often borders on boring, but it's worth it for the last few episodes. I still am having difficulty processing it, and I finished the series on Friday. I want to start watching it from the first minute again, but I need to give myself a moment to breathe before I immerse myself in that world again. JFC, that was good!
Loved this messy, messy international show.
The relevance of the Lito storyline, which I first questioned, became clearer and clearer as the episodes went on: it was all about honesty, integrity, identity, masks and fractured masculinity, all important themes of the series.
I usually hate it when characters are speaking English instead of their own languages, but (to refer to an earlier blog post) the show seems designed to be dubbed into the language of any territory. Any time two characters "meet" for the first time, we see them speaking their actual language and the scenes are subtitled. They just didn't want to subtitle the whole series.
I love this show, it is so refreshing and original. I've anticipated that sex scene since I saw the trailer and it was a lot better than I expected. Episode 6 was the best in my opinion.
I see that Wachowskis steal the show with some specific scenes, like this one and the karaoke. Can't wait until the next season.
I hope you stuck with it, the last few episodes are easily the best.