.
One aspect that does still rankle with him is the absence of full-frontal male nudity. Ivory’s screenplay specified that Elio and Oliver would be shown naked, a detail overruled by clauses in the actors’ contracts. “When Luca says he never thought of putting nudity in, that is totally untrue,” says Ivory. “He sat in this very room where I am sitting now, talking about how he would do it, so when he says that it was a conscious aesthetic decision not to – well, that’s just bullshit. When people are wandering around before or after making love, and they’re decorously covered with sheets, it’s always seemed phoney to me. I never liked doing that. And I don’t do it, as you know.” In Maurice, his 1987 film of EM Forster’s posthumously published gay love story, “the two guys have had sex and they get up and you certainly see everything there is to be seen. To me, that’s a more natural way of doing things than to hide them, or to do what Luca did, which is to pan the camera out of the window toward some trees. Well …” He gives a derisive snort.
If you haven't read my long-form piece on this very topic at The Film Experience please go and read that before leaving any comments here - I don't want to wade through y'all's opinions if you haven't read that, please. I considered putting a poll up here to gauge everyone's opinions but who's going to vote against more sex and nudity in the film? Even I would have a difficult time voting against that. I would love that!
The real question is "Does the movie work without more sex and nudity, as it is?" and... I have seen the movie seventeen times in the theater and named it the best film of the year; clearly I think the movie works. I just think, when faced with such a beautiful film, that this continued conversation is the dumbest possible conversation to be having and honestly it disappoints me, that this is the conversation. That this is what people want to keep talking about. How exquisitely maudlin.
