Movies I Love, Part XIII: Body Heat

Posted: December 14th, 2008 | Filed under: Cinema, Culture, Features | No Comments »

Ned Racine (William Hurt) in “Body Heat,” like Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Jake Gittes in “Chinatown,” is bright but not as much so as he thinks, and he falls in love with the wrong woman. Racine, an underachieving lawyer in hot hot hot south Florida, is also a bit lazy, single, ever on the prowl and tempestuously immoral.

The audience realizes, but he doesn’t, that he’s a goner from the moment he spies lithe, sensuous and smokey-voiced Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) at a concert one night on the pier.

She smolders. They flirt. She disappears on him. He tracks her down. (As Matty says, “Well, some men, once they get a whiff of it, they trail you like a hound.”) What ensues is the hottest interlude in film. Which I now present for your perusal.

Matty’s hubby Edmund (Richard Crenna), who is conveniently away a lot on business, is not as “small and weak” as Matty says. Even though Ned realizes that after a chance encounter with the couple at a restaurant, his passion leads to you know what conclusion. They desire no impediments to their “love.” As Ned says, “A man is going to die . . . just because we want him to.”

This modern Film Noir is one of my two or three favorite movies of all time. Released in 1981, I watched it again just last night with the Film Babe at some friends’ home with a boffo home theater set up including a humongous screen.

“Body Heat” remains as good, almost perfect, as I remember. Matty plays Ned like Clapton plays guitar, that is like a master. She draws him in with mutually enjoyable and extremely hot sex. This film is unabashedly sensual in a way very rarely seen on the screen in American made films. The actors get naked. Matty doesn’t keep her bra on during sex like just about every women in film does these days. The two enjoy their trysts.

Then, as if it were his own idea, as if he doesn’t know any better, he does her bidding.

There are the usual McGuffins, twists, turns, mistakes and delusion that make Noir the fun film genre that it is. Ambience plays a major role here. As it should. Shadows. Fog, The heat and humidity are palpable.

The movie was written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan. The plot is believable and unfolds essentially without flaw. Watching scenes on the DVD which were left out of the film underscores how astute the editing was. The dialog is as pithy and Raymond Chandleresque as one could hope for.

The supporting cast and characters are pitch perfect. Ted Danson as Ned’s buddy, Peter Lowenstein, the dancing DA. J.A. Preston, another pal of Ned’s, as an honest cop with a job to do, no matter where his investigation leads. And Mickey Rourke as arsonist Teddy Lewis, showing us why he held so much promise as an actor and why we can’t wait to his heralded return to prominence in the soon to be released, “The Wrestler.”

Realizing this in Lucky #XIII in this series of posts on “Movies I Love,” I can’t believe I haven’t gotten to it sooner.

This is great filmmaking. See “Body Heat” with somebody you love. Leave time afterward to savor the sensuous after effects.

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