Parthenope review — soft porn and not much else
Parthenope, played for most of the film by Celeste Dalla Porta, is as gorgeous as the Neapolitan scenery in which Sorrentino plonks her. The director certainly thinks so, lingering lasciviously on her bikini-clad form in scene after scene. It's two fingers up at #MeToo and a baseball bat to his reputation.
This is a film that strives desperately for beauty, sensuality and philosophical depth and only sporadically achieves the first of those. Even the beauty
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The Guardian
19 minutes ago
- The Guardian
More sex please, we're bookish: the rise of the x-rated novel
When the judges awarded Yael van der Wouden's brilliant debut, The Safekeep, the Women's prize for fiction last month, they weren't just garlanding a book that happens to have a few sexy scenes in it. They were responding to a work that engages with the current levels of literary excitement around sex and marries this with sweeping historical vistas and a distinctive sensibility. It was joined on the shortlist by Miranda July's exuberant odyssey of midlife desire, All Fours, and Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis, a smart, quickfire account of a young academic's work for a UN deradicalisation programme, which juxtaposes the world of Middle Eastern religious politics with a closeup relish for female sexuality. While younger generations, at least, have said in recent years that they want to see more platonic friendship and less sex on screen, reading appetites appear to be going in the other direction, with a huge boom in romance and 'romantasy' – the romance-fantasy hybrid driven by TikTok and the success of authors such as Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J Maas. We all have strong, mixed feelings about sex, and the cultural landscape reflects the whole spectrum of kinks and hangups. But that means that we have all the more need for writers like Van der Wouden, July and Sally Rooney, who push the boundaries of how explicit the literary novel can be while also giving us new ways of imagining how desire works within lives today. Ours is a dual age of identity politics and porn. We get our identities from sex – queer or straight, pansexual or 'incel' – but it's also the white-hot arena in which identity melts down. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, when pornography is everywhere and Gillian Anderson is collecting thousands of sexual fantasies with anthropological zeal, it seems we still need literature to tell us new things about sex. What I found, reading recent work by authors including Rooney, Van der Wouden, Jen Beagin, K Patrick and Eimear McBride, were unpredictable fusions of the two impulses. Lovers, dutifully preoccupied with questions of identity by day, find that in bed they can transcend selfhood, outstripping their identities. To surrender individuality and accept the dissolution of the self, to lose sight of who is in control – these possibilities have preoccupied erotic writers since the early 20th century, when sex first became representable in literary fiction. Back then there was DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, staking the redemption of humanity on sexual transformation. In Lawrence's wake came Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin and Georges Bataille – all about abjection and breaking taboos. Then the outrageously argumentative Norman Mailer and John Updike, whose frank delight in the female form called out for a feminist backlash. It came in the shape of Kate Millett's wittily polemical 1970 Sexual Politics and a new wave of sexually explicit novels by women concerned less with celebrating than with demythologising sex. Erica Jong's epochal 1973 Fear of Flying ushered in the 'zipless fuck' – sex without strings – and allowed a generation of feminists to experiment with promiscuity, but for all its brilliance on psychoanalysis and marriage, the book is pretty terrible on sex. It took another backlash – within feminism itself – to make sex great again. In 1967 Susan Sontag had written The Pornographic Imagination, an essay defending writers such as Bataille from prudery and fighting to classify pornographic writing as literature, even or especially when it exceeded realism. 'Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness,' she wrote – so why not make it a resource for 'breaking through the limits of consciousness'? Angela Carter took on Sontag's ideas in her 1978 study, The Sadeian Woman, arguing against feminists concerned to outlaw porn, and making the case for the 'moral pornographer' – an artist who 'uses pornographic material as part of the acceptance of the logic of a world of absolute sexual licence for all the genders'. Sontag and Carter saw that the power of sex lay in opening selfhood to otherness with extravagant force. Otherness and innovation go together, so great writing about great sex always has radical potential. The parameters they set out still define the best possibilities of what sex writing can be, though plenty of men – from Philip Roth to Michel Houellebecq – came along in the meantime to try to prove that male desire was still fascinating. Reading in our contemporary era, I find myself most riveted by writers who continue Carter's tradition. Published earlier this year, Sophie Kemp's Paradise Logic tells the satirical story of a young woman's attempt to make herself into the ideal girlfriend and, in doing so, exposes the patriarchal nature of porn culture. But precisely because it's so clever and sassy it reveals the limits of satire, whereas other contemporary novelists are bringing together the pornographic and the transcendent in a more transporting way. It's telling that these writers are more often writing gay than heterosexual sex. Garth Greenwell, who has described himself as wanting to write scenes that are '100% pornographic and 100% high art', is more trammelled by questions of identity than Alan Hollinghurst was when he wrote The Swimming-Pool Library – a book Greenwell credits as an inspiration. Greenwell is writing sex in the age of consent and dutiful identity politics, but arguably it's these constraints that power his existential quest. There's a scene in Greenwell's 2020 Cleanness where the pornographic and the transcendent explicitly entwine. The narrator has a BDSM encounter with a Bulgarian man he calls Svetcheto, 'the little saint'. The usually submissive narrator has agreed to dominate. It's a brutal scene, all the more frightening because it mirrors an earlier encounter when the narrator was dangerously violated. We're worried both that he'll reenact that violence and that he won't carry off this new role. But then it becomes clear he's enjoying himself. Suffused by mutual, unexpected transcendence, the couple's porn-inspired identities simultaneously break down and burst into flower. Laughing, Svetcheto licks away the narrator's tears. 'Do you see? You don't have to be like that,' he says. 'You can be like this.' Jen Beagin, K Patrick and Yael van der Wouden write moving, powerful portraits of lesbian desire, full of anatomical detail. Beagin's Big Swiss is a large-hearted tale of a love affair between Flavia, an absurdly beautiful gynaecologist, and Greta, the more klutzy, down-at-heel writer who's paid by Flavia's sex therapist to transcribe her sessions. 'Her pussy looked like advanced origami. A crisp pink lotus flower folded by a master. Greta briefly rearranged it with her mouth.' The sex scenes in Patrick's Mrs S are less metaphorical and more breathlessly desiring, though the prose is taut in its lyricism. It can feel like the plot – a love affair between the 22-year-old new teaching recruit and the headmaster's wife in a girls' boarding school – is an excuse for the sex scenes, but in a way that's the point. In both books, it is striking how quickly sex reveals the existential need for transformation. Even in that first sex scene, Greta feels as if she's reached a place 'she's been visiting in her dreams for years and forgetting'. Mrs S is casually historical – set in the 1980s or 90s – which means its identity politics can be implicit: the narrator wears a chest binder but the book doesn't raise questions of trans identity. Instead it is preoccupied with the loss of identity, as the narrator feels herself remade as the 'You' she becomes in her lover's mouth. 'It is as if she has always been waiting for this arrival, of me into my body. You. I don't have a name. Isn't it so much better, to not have a name, to be dropped straight from the clouds?' The sex scenes are more shocking in Van der Wouden's The Safekeep because the subject matter is so serious. This is the story of a violently sudden passion that becomes a love affair between Eva, a displaced Jew, and Isabel, a gentile woman who has unwitting power over her. The book is set in the aftermath of the second world war and, given the gravity of the material, some reviewers have wondered if the sex scenes are necessary. But this is to miss the point, which is that the book only works if the relationship throws both women entirely off-kilter – using the edges of porn to show sex derailing not only their lives but their selves, and indeed the conventional novel form itself. Isabel finds herself vulnerably, joyously powerless in an unfamiliar body: 'At Eva's mercy, trapped between the cage of her teeth, she had grown a new shape.' Van der Wouden insists that her complex sense of character development justifies sexual explicitness. But she has also been clear in interviews that no justification is needed: 'The girls deserve to have some fun. This was my mantra while writing: Let them have some fun!' So what about those writers daring to write explicit, ecstatic heterosexual sex? The most compelling are Eimear McBride, whose The Lesser Bohemians makes the reader feel as though they are almost inside the bodies of the protagonists, and Sally Rooney, who is casually magisterial at writing sex scenes that are at once radiant and minutely observed by her overthinking characters. Like Greenwell, Rooney balances a commitment to a contemporary vision of identity and consent with a willingness to explore the pull of dissolution and abjection. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion In Intermezzo, the young chess genius Ivan checks repeatedly that his lover likes what he's doing, while his brother Peter half-exploits Naomi, a young woman who has sold pornographic images of herself and remains too willing to abase herself for men. But beneath these exterior sexual identities are their private bodily lives, and sex is the best means of growth they have. Rooney follows McBride in dizzyingly contorting her sentences: 'Deep pressing almost hurting and she felt him throbbing, wanting to, and she wanted that also, wet inside, image of silver behind her closed eyelids, jetting, emptying into her …' Rooney is surprised that people don't ask her more often about the place of sex in her novels; 'the erotic is a huge engine in the stories of all my books,' she has said. But it is in All Fours that the full possibilities of Carter's 'moral pornography' are realised. July's novel manages to be at once an ethnographic account of women's perimenopausal sexuality and a more darkly anti-realist tale of a woman living out her sexual fantasies. The narrator spends vast sums transforming a small-town hotel room into a sumptuous dreamscape, where she tests her capacities for love and lust with Davey, a beautiful, potent but determinedly chaste young dancer she meets at the gas station. The encounters with Davey are brilliantly, exuberantly realised – all the more so because July never loses sight of their comedy. In the absence of sex, they seek consummation elsewhere, and at one point Davey changes her tampon. The scene is both bathetically comic, intensely erotic, and unexpectedly moving. But it is once she and Davey part and the narrator has sex with sexagenarian Audra that the novel becomes incandescent. The narrator is home now, adjusting to her former life, but has negotiated a weekly night in the hotel. She seeks out Audra, who had a relationship with Davey years earlier, desperate to compare notes. 'Fantasies are all good and well up to a certain age,' Audra says, 'Then you have to have lived experiences or you'll go batty.' And so Audra describes her sexual past with Davey, while both women masturbate, an experience that, for the narrator, 'lit up new neural pathways, as if sex, the whole concept of it, was being freshly mapped'. As a sexual encounter, this is moving and original. As a vision of womanhood undergoing feats of change and confronting mortality, it's extraordinary. This scene takes us beyond realism. In her life at home, July's narrator is casually, matter-of-factly bound up in the sexual questions of her contemporary world: she has a nonbinary child and is anxiously aware how limited her sex life is by motherhood. But July uses the narrator's experiences in the hotel room to bend and test our sense of novelistic, psychological plausibility. It is a place where identity can be discarded and remade. Sex remains at the centre of much of the best fiction, and we need powerful fictions to show us what sex is or can become. This is where realism comes up against something stranger, and body and consciousness undo and affirm each other, because it can be at once so ordinary, and so transcendent. Lara Feigel is the author of Look! We Have Come Through! – Living with DH Lawrence (Bloomsbury).
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Nepo babies used to get on our nerves – now they've got the upper hand
This week, Brooklyn Beckham shocked his followers when he shared a video of himself rustling up a tomato pasta dish using seawater. In the clip posted to his Instagram, the would-be chef leans off the back of a luxury yacht and dips a silver saucepan into the sea, before bringing the briny to boil and plopping in some spaghetti. 'That's disgusting,' one person commented. Others said: 'Nothing like cooking in sewage water …' and – possibly most devastating of all – 'Go get a real job PLEASE!!!!!!' Beckham, 26, has long faced criticism from nepo baby haters for using his privileged position as the eldest child of David and Victoria Beckham to his advantage in his various 'careers'. His amateurish seawater pasta is but his latest clueless foray into the world of work. He irritated established fashion photographers when, aged 16, he was hired by Burberry to shoot its latest fragrance campaign. In a juvenile collection of his photographs, published by Penguin Random House, his shot of a dimly lit elephant was accompanied by a caption: 'Elephants in Kenya. so hard to photograph but incredible to see.' In 2022, his career relaunch as an chef-influencer, with his straight-to-Instagram show Cookin' with Brooklyn, reputedly required a team of 62 professionals, including culinary producers, cameramen and several producers – and cost a staggering £74,000 an episode to make. Nothing like starting at the bottom and working your way up, is there? When Oasis return to Wembley Stadium this weekend, for the first time since 2009, as part of the brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher's reunion tour, they will be supported by Richard Ashcroft of The Verve. But eyes have no doubt rolled at Liam's daughter Molly and Ashcroft's son Sonny gracing the front of the new issue of Tatler, as cover stars for their latest Cool Britannia issue for the same reason: they are only famous because of their parents. In the cover photo, Molly, 27, a model, is standing on an elaborate gilded French stool in a blue leather mini-coat, with musician Sonny, 25, who is hoping to release music soon – wearing a tie against the backdrop of a huge Union flag. The trouble with nepo babies – a phrase coined in 2022 that shortens 'nepotism', and which Gwyneth Paltrow dismissed as an "ugly moniker" with which to beat the children of famous people – is that they are successful only because their famous parent(s) helped them get their foot in the door. Those that are talented struggle to escape the pervasive feeling that their connections and money have given them a headstart that other equally talented people won't get. The resentment is that it's grossly unfair as the rest of us have to claw our way to the top. We can't just walk into a movie role, or capitalise on being the next generation leading the Britpop revival. To win favour, nepo babies shouldn't deny or hide their privilege like Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis's daughter Lily-Rose Depp, 26, did when she once claimed in Elle magazine that 'nothing is going to get you the part except for being right for the part'. This week, Isadora Bjarkardottir Barney, 22-year-old daughter of Icelandic singer Björk, claimed that being a nepo baby 'doesn't help you much', after landing her first leading role in a feature film, The Mountain. Hailey Bieber tried to embrace the term by wearing a 'Nepo Baby' crop top in 2023, to acknowledge her Baldwin family dynasty links, but was then criticised online for 'not being enough' of a nepo baby. Stranger Things actor Maya Hawke – daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman – tried a different tack, admitting what a privileged position she is in, compared with the rest of us. Since the whole debate erupted with New York Magazine's 2022 cover The Year of the Nepo Baby, things have changed. I say it's about time we stopped hating on nepo babies. Today's nepos – nepo 2.0, the next generation – are fully aware of their ridiculousness, and they're now actually playing up to it. Because they can't help who their famous parents are – and what else are they supposed to do? That's why Beckham now courts criticism and finger-pointing laughs by cooking seawater pasta, and why the Oasis nepo babies are happy to push their status as cultural icons for a new generation. The difference is the new breed of nepo babies aren't struggling with the nepo label. They are just happy to weaponise it and get up in our faces. Blue Ivy Carter, 13, the daughter of Beyoncé and Jay-Z, has been dubbed a positive example of nepotism in the music industry for her stage presence and talent after she brazenly adopted the role of chief backing dancer for her mum's Cowboy Carter tour – often stealing the limelight. Kai Gerber, 23, looks the spitting image of her supermodel mum Cindy Crawford – for a reason. She's continuing Crawford's legacy in the fashion industry. Nepo babies offer the rest of us light relief in dark times. Getting ahead because of mum and/or dad isn't going away – so we might as well enjoy it.
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Coleen Nolan, Corrie's Ken Barlow & other celebs ask me to read their pets' minds… I charge £130 a pop – I'm no fraud
A "DOG whisperer" charges £130 a pop to read the minds of people's pets - and has worked with Corrie's Ken Barlow and Coleen Nolan. Psychic Jackie Weaver says one of cobbles stalwart William Roache's dogs revealed a secret about its owner to her - and she even performed her "gift" on Loose Women star Coleen's pooch on live TV. 5 5 5 Jackie, 61, claims she first realised that she 'knew' impossible things as a child and that she always had a 'close connection' with animals. However, Jackie says she only learned to receive 'pictures, words and physical feelings' from animals later in life after beating stage four lymphoma. All she needs is a picture of the animal to connect with a 'wavelength' in her mind - like a mobile phone - which allows her to chat to the dog or cat. During her cancer battle, she says she was told by another psychic her mysterious 'connection' was actually a powerful psychic ability. Now, Jackie runs a successful business where she tunes into the minds of cats and dogs to reveal their innermost secrets to their owners. She works closely with many famous celebrities, who are fans of her spiritual service, including soap veteran Roache, and even hypnotist Paul McKenna. Jackie has remained close friends with Roache, whom she knows as Bill, ever since appearing with him on This Morning - and she's even gotten close to his dogs. Jackie said: "I went to Bill's house and chatted to all three of his dogs. "We had such fun and they were all very individual in their own ways. "What makes me smile to this day was when one pointed out that Bill often started hobbies but tended not to complete them! "Bill's face was a picture as he pointed to a door and said, 'Behind that door is a painting that is half finished, and it has been like that for the past two years!' "Just goes to show, animals know much about their owners, celebrities or not." Jenny Seagrove, star A Woman of Substance, is also a longtime customer of Jackie's - having become her friend during one psychic reading. Despite her immense popularity, though, Jackie says that she finds that people are 'sceptical' about her abilities. One doubter was Loose Women panelist Coleen Nolan, whom Jackie met when she appeared on the show. Jackie said: 'I have done a lot of TV over the years and had to prove again and again, often live on air, that I am communicating with that person's animal and they are recognising the information. 'I remember chatting to several animals live on air, for the ladies of the Loose Women panel. 'Coleen Nolan was open with me and said she was still not sure about my ability, until I told her the reason why her dog only had three legs and what had happened.' 5 5 During the episode, Jackie said that Coleen's dog lost its leg when it was 'very young' as she received a direct message from the pooch - who said it had 'always known life like this'. Jackie claimed that Mika, the dog, had lost its leg after falling from a height. Coleen confirmed that she had rescued her dog, adopting him after he fell from a sofa and lost his leg. Some of the animals that Jackie meets have heartbreaking stories to share, like one horse who told the psychic that it has been supported by 'the angels'. The horse had fallen into a cattle grid and was unable to be rescued by the Fire Brigade. However, somehow, the horse suddenly freed itself from its trap. Trying to understand the bizarre incident, the horse's owner called Jackie - having thought that the horse had 'given up'. Opening up about the story, Jackie said: 'I suddenly heard, loud and clear, 'The Angels lifted me out'. 'I interrupted her, and quickly thought of how to put this, and said, 'This might sound odd, but all of a sudden did he seem to be up and out?' 'She said, 'Yes, it was astonishing and nobody could believe what they had just experienced. He had a few scrapes on his but was absolutely fine.' 'I told her what he had said about the Angels. I get goosebumps to this day when I recall it. 'Like my work, and my own 'terminal' survival, sometimes things happen that we can just not explain.' Often, Jackie works with animals who are about to die and claims to be able to let owners know what their animals are thinking. According to her, animals can tell owners about their pain and even reintroduce them to pets who have passed on. She says this serves two purposes. Jackie said: 'Firstly, they know their pet will not be alone when they pass over, and there is an afterlife. 'This is not the end. 'Secondly, the owners have experienced the grief of losing a pet before and came through it, eventually.' According to Jackie, every animal is different and each one has its own unique personality - with her own cat acting 'like a dog' who likes to go on walks. Because of that, she doesn't have a favourite type of animal to chat to. She said: 'I do not have a favourite species of animal to chat to - they are all individuals and I love it when I learn something new - you would be amazed what information animals can share. 'Funny animals are fabulous as I love to laugh and make people smile.'
