If there’s one film that epitomizes the power of environment over libido, it has to be Lawrence Kasdan’s directorial debut, the totally-80s noir Body Heat, which takes place during a Florida heat wave (does it get any hotter than that?) In fact the balmy weather is a character unto itself, so much so that Kasdan’s production designer Bill Kenney should have gotten top billing right along with the spectacularly sexy duo of William Hurt as smalltime lawyer Ned Racine and Kathleen Turner as the femme fatale Matty Walker, out to wield him as a weapon for murdering her wealthy husband. Never a moment goes by where the third character of heat and humidity isn’t enveloping the pair in a passionate ménage a trois.
And never does a fry-an-egg-on-the-pavement summer in NYC go by when I don’t wonder why one of our many outdoor screenings doesn’t showcase this perfectly paced, edge-of-your-seat engrossing film. It can’t be because of any racy sex scenes since Kasdan shoots rather chastely, with the camera cutting away before anything explicitly raunchy occurs. Instead he chooses a lot of close ups of Matty’s orgasm-chasing face, Ned’s hands squeezing her butt cheeks and parting her legs, a couple of gratuitous glimpses of Turner’s tits, but that’s about it. (Bunuel’s erotic classic L’Age d’Or with its toe fellatio scene at the end is way more pornographic than anything Kasdan puts onscreen.) What’s so palpably sizzling is nothing less than the chemistry between the equally matched (in talent and animal sexuality) Hurt and Turner who, even while bantering double entendres fully-clothed, create enough buzzing electricity to counter a blackout.
