06.04.01
I once spent a not inconsiderable amount of time searching for a copy of the Peter Greenaway film, The Baby of Maçon, because I read somewhere that it featured a quite naked Ralph Fiennes.
Oh, beautiful and beloved Ralph Fiennes. I'm not quite sure what exactly made me so particularly enamored of this fellow, I only know that it happened about halfway through The English Patient, somewhere around the part where he is sitting in the bathtub, badly mending Katherine's dress after he has torn the bodice in a fit of passion. Something about that scene cemented a deep and passionate love for him, forever, in my quirky little heart.
I never did get to see The Baby of Maçon, but I recently found myself watching Sunshine, a most excellent epic film about three generations of a family, all three of the relevant male leads played by Ralph. And Sunshine featured a quite explicit, extended scene of my beloved Ralph, naked as a jaybird, both front and back.
However, I was denied the pleasure of basking in his joyously resplendent nekkidity, as I am not a disgusting pervert that enjoys watching a man being stripped down by his jailors in a concentration camp, tortured, beaten and then hung from a tree until he either dies from hypothermia or internal bleeding, possibly a combination of both, all while his juvenile son looked on helplessly. I was not only completely unable to feel enthusiastic about the experience, but I felt disgusting for having any thoughts about how I should be happy to have finally seen the goods in their entirety.
Fortunately, there is a generous amount of back-end and from-the-side/everything-but nudity scattered throughout the film, so that I didn't feel completely robbed by the situation.
I even got to see him dive nose-first into a busty blonde's hoo-hoo, and there was NO WAY that was, um, anything but a real experience. I saw bush, I saw his face, I saw his face in extremely close proximity* to her bush not a second later, and then I saw his face leave the proximity of her bush, thus re-exposing the bush in question.
I wonder if that was odd for them to film. How exactly does one prepare to have Ralph Fiennes sticking his nose in your cooter on camera? Did someone groom the area in question for best visual effect? Did they have to do a lot of takes? Was there a great deal of giggling on the set?
Honestly, I would really like to know.
*translate 'in close proximity to' as 'buried nose-first in', and you will have a better picture of the situation. At least I enjoyed it.
