The 2013 movie Pamela Anderson called the greatest erotic film ever made: “Different and beautiful”
Despite what you may think, based solely on her reputation as one of the defining sex symbols of the 1990s, Pamela Anderson has only ever starred in a single erotic thriller.
Admittedly, 1996’s Barb Wire was packaged, sold, and marketed on the back of her sex appeal, but that’s a kitschy superhero flick more than anything else. A terrible one, too, after it tanked at the box office and won her a Razzie for ‘Worst New Star’, hinting that her agent might have been right all along.
There’s also 1994’s Dark Souls, but that’s much more of an action thriller with some comedic elements than anything overtly erotic, with Anderson playing a sex worker who goes into hiding after witnessing a murder. That one wasn’t very good, either, but it was at least a damn sight better than Barb Wire.
That leaves Naked Souls, which was released two weeks after her Razzie-winning flop and was clearly designed to capitalise on the lingering obsession with steamy thrillers. By the mid-90s, though, the craze was on its last legs, with audience interest having almost completely evaporated in salacious cinema.
In the picture, Anderson plays the wife of a scientist who ignores her in favour of developing cutting-edge technology that will allow him to transfer his consciousness into another body, and when it succeeds, he accidentally ends up occupying the mind of his wealthy benefactor, forcing her character to discover the truth and make everything right. It sounds stupid, and it absolutely is.
That’s beside the point, really, since it’s hardly a genre that the Baywatch alum is too familiar with. And yet, for whatever reason, when taking part in a Reddit AMA, somebody thought it would be a good idea to ask Anderson to name the greatest erotic movie she’s ever seen.
She did give an answer, but it’s one that carries an excess of unwanted baggage. “I think that film, Blue is the Warmest Colour,” she replied. “I don’t know if that’s too much of an erotic film, but I thought it was different and beautiful.” It is an erotic film, by definition, and it was widely acclaimed. However, the aftermath has tarnished its reputation in the eyes of many.
Co-writer and director Abdellatif Kechiche’s romantic drama won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and served as the international breakthrough for Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, but the two leading actors subsequently revealed that the filmmaker’s behaviour behind the scenes was troubling.
Describing the experience as “horrible,” Exarchopoulos and Seydoux said they’d never work with Kechiche again, with the auteur going so far as to suggest that Blue is the Warmest Colour shouldn’t be released because it was “too sullied” by the reports about his behaviour, insisting that “this film should not go out” when it carried so much controversy and negative publicity. It did, obviously, but no matter how good the film is, the knowledge of what went on behind the scenes left a sour taste.
