The strongly drawn characters in "The Principles of Lust" promise much at the beginning of this too-willfully stylish feature bow. Director Penny Woolcock adapts Tim Cooke's novel as a hip, highly charged and shocking look at modern mores, like "Trainspotting" grown older (but no wiser.)

The strongly drawn thirtysomething characters in “The Principles of Lust” — an unpublished writer, a single mom who teaches kids, a diabolical photographer — promise much at the beginning of this too-willfully stylish feature bow. Farther into the film, when it becomes clear the hero’s dramatic choice boils down to family life with the beautiful, smart woman he loves or orgies with a bunch of bruisers, interest wanes. Director Penny Woolcock, who has won awards for TV dramas like “Tina Goes Shopping,” adapts Tim Cooke’s novel as a hip, highly charged and shocking look at modern mores, like “Trainspotting” grown older (but no wiser.) Explicit sex scenes and some perversely violent material may give pic an initial spurt of business, and its strong cast of attractive thesps has youth appeal, but it’s unlikely to generate the word of mouth needed for staying power.

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Film opens with the startling visual of a naked man trapped in an aquarium and running out of air. At first readable as a dream image, it turns into something else when the man, Paul (Alec Newman), breaks the wall of the tank and the scene is revealed to be part of a filmed art installation. It is at a gallery viewing that Paul, a young writer on the dole, meets Juliette (Sienna Guillory.) He gets her away from what seems to be her female lover by sucking on her foot in public, and they consummate their lust in a heady all-night fling.

The same day, Paul meets Billy (Marc Warren) and his alarmingly named friend Hole (Lara Clifton), who gets her kicks lap-dancing in bars. Billy is actually a highly regarded photographer and Hole a law student, but this enriches their characters about as much as it would learning that Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” also played the piano. They are bad influence personified, and the relatively straight Paul is their chosen victim.

When the angels are winning, Paul moves in with the lovely Juliette and, while writing his novel, takes care of her young son while she works to support them. When the devil takes over, he swings toward Billy and the worst things the scriptwriters can imagine. Apart from sex and drugs, which are hard to film shockingly these days, the eye-popping, look-away scene is a bloody bare-knuckle fight between 11-year-old boys while their fathers take bets. It neatly picks up the film’s recurrent theme of men as vulnerable, naked primates whose instincts keep driving them back into primitivism.

“Without comparison, everything loses its meaning,” Billy viciously tells Paul. It’s a dumb idea, but enough to shake Paul’s faith in the rightness of his living arrangements with Juliette. The flame has gone out of their sex life and Paul, being a writer and all, needs experience. When he suggests he may screw Hole in the name of freedom, Juliette runs out the door and has sex with two men.

From here, the flighty material blasts off into outer space, leaving the actors behind to take the rap. Yet Newman, Guillory and Warren, all strong, natural actors who perform not only in the buff but without a trace of makeup, give a lot to their parts and make them work as far as the script allows. Aiding the film’s raw look is lenser Graham Smith’s minimally lit sets and freely moving handheld camera that gets up close to the actors. Andy Cowton’s music has many moods and is used extensively without becoming banal.

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The Principles of Lust

U.K.

  • Production: A Blast! Films production. (International sales: Pathe Intl., London.) Produced by Madonna Baptiste. Directed, written by Penny Woolcock, based on a novel by Tim Cooke.
  • Crew: Camera (color), Graham Smith; editor, Brand Thumim; music, Andy Cowton; production designer, Jo Baker; sound (Dolby Digital), Stuart Bruce. Reviewed at Rotterdam Film Festival (main program), Jan. 29, 2003. Running time: 108 MIN.
  • With: Paul - Alec Newman Juliette - Sienna Guillory Billy - Marc Warren Hole - Lara Clifton Phillip - Julian Barratt With: Alexander Popplewell, Gwyne Hollis, Kelli Hollis, Tommy Yates, Skint Eastwood.

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