Since it's debut at the Cannes Film Festival back in 1996 this film would probably be the director's most controversial film, the title implies what the film is about but when the subject matter of car crashes actually being an erotic turn-on for some and the characters are also acting on those urges it makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
Story Synopsis:
After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.
The characters are already fully developed into what some think is perverse or sick, or even both. But think about the last time you passed by a traffic accident ---you want to look away, but instead, find yourself slowing down and looking at what happened. Everyone has a different outlook of what they saw, how they felt, and what it did to them. For these characters it is erotic and they are just that, actors playing the parts of these characters and that is all.
I myself was and cannot still understand what the big deal is about the sex in the movie--they are adults and the use of the camera is both just watching it all unfold and tell the story and bringing the heat and very really lust that these characters develop for each other.
There is even eroticism with the buying of a new vehicle and the smell of the new car when we follow James Ballard(James Spader) & Helen Remington(Holly Hunter) in the car when he is driving her home, I noticed the different camera angle. We normally follow in the middle of the seats and the front of the car, but for this scene, he has the camera in the left side of James Spader as he continues to tug at his seatbelt, and then we are slightly above the outside of the window of Holly Hunter. This was a very different way to shoot a car shot and it works for so many reasons.
The odd part of the movie for me was when we are at home with the group and they are watching car accident simulations for car companies with the dummies inside the car, they all get aroused and Helen Remmington( Holly Hunter-middle) starts to rub James(James Spader-right) & Gabrielle(Rosanna Arquette-left)
I think where the biggest problem with the film for a lot of people back in the day of the initial release is that there are two sex scenes of same-sex partners. James Spader & Elias Koteas(Vaughan) have a scene where they kiss and engage in a very intense scene that is mostly implied and we are never really shown much. Holly Hunter & Rosanna Arquette find a car in the damaged car lot and lie in the back and proceed to make out, but that scene is surprisingly shorter than the men's scene.
James near the end of the film proceeds to chase his wife Catherine down the street until she is pushed off the road and the car goes down an embankment and she is thrown from the car. He goes to her and starts to kiss her cuts and grope her breasts. I am sure this is no surprise to the end of the film only because those of us who were interested in the film before now would have seen it prior to this new release which looks fantastic and really compliments the film more than the grainy resolution we see in some of the pictures included here. Because I do not have a 4K player I did not see the film in that version, instead I was supplied a link of the film but it looks much better than the previous DVD version that I have seen.