New Thriller Starring Emily Ratajkowski and Natalie Dormer Criticized for ‘Gratuitous Nudity’
See for yourself.
A new thriller starring Game of Thrones actress Natalie Dormer and Emily Ratajkowski, In Darkness, has caught flack from critics for its “gratuitous nudity.”
Dormer plays a blind woman, Sofia, whose beautiful and—as it usually goes in these instances—”mysterious” neighbor Veronique is thrown off her roof in an act of apparent murder.
Critics gave the movie soft praise for its direction and Dormer’s performance, but many took issue with Ratajkowski’s Eastern European accent (sorry, girl!) and the movie’s plentiful nudity.
A critic at Rogerebert.com wrote that the violence was “sadistic” and another from The Guardian described the movie as a “trashy crime caper” that “finds fetish items everywhere.”
“The film infuses its fairly generic storyline with some audacious stylistic devices,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “such as a sequence intercutting the ritual religious washing of Veronique’s corpse with images of Sofia showering, the latter complete with gratuitous nudity.”
Dormer, who co-wrote the script, defended her movie in an interview with The Guardian.
“There has to be sexuality in the power play of a thriller. We have all got bodies, after all. In this film the sex scene, which for me was a love-making scene, is a metaphor for the way my character connects with the part played by [fellow Game of Thrones actor] Ed Skrein… Nakedness is a good equalizer and the shower scene also shows the tattoos on my character’s body and makes it clear she is not quite who you think.”
She then defended a sex scene.
If the lead characters do not have a clear connection, then it doesn’t work… And on screen it has to be a physical connection between two broken people. That was my intention. In a thriller the protagonists always have to join together somehow and sex represents that connection. If you are being true to the genre, you have to show this.
See for yourself. In Darkness is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and available for download on iTunes.
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