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Full Body Massage
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Unearthed Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (13th February 2024). |
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The Film
 Nina (Someone to Watch Over Me's Mimi Rogers) is a successful art dealer who looks forward to her weekly home massage appointment. This week, however, her regular masseuse Douglas (Twice Dead's Christopher Burgard) has failed to turn up, sending instead Fitch (F/X's Bryan Brown). Nina is caught off-guard by this change and tries to convey what she liked about Douglas without conveying her attraction to the younger, handsome Douglas to the older, frustratingly aloof Fitch; and even more so disarmed when she learns that Douglas has said that she and Fitch would be well-suited to each other, describing Nina as "lost." Over the course of an afternoon inside Nina's ultramodern house and its well-kept grounds, Fitch exposes Nina to a regimen of treatments with an emphasis on spiritual wellness as a path to the physical. Just as Nina starts to unwind under Fitch's ministrations, however, she starts to bristle at his blithe observations undermining the way she presents herself and her love of art and beautiful things as a general lack of spiritual fulfillment and starts to interrogate the nature of Fitch's enigmatic persona and whether his own comparatively-ascetic lifestyle is a search for or escape from something. A consistently-interesting filmmaker whose works straddled the mainstream and the avant-garde, cinematographer-turned-director Nicolas Roeg (Don't Look Now) made his directorial debut in a collaboration with writer-turned-director Donald Cammell (White of the Eye) on the scandalous and stimulating Performance. Throughout his career, Roeg continued their experiments with non-linear, associative editing in a manner that was complex yet acceptable to the mainstream in his filmography between Performance in 1970 and 1989's Track 29 while Cammell's career was sadly marked by failed studio projects and jobbing works like Demon Seed. Following that, Roeg started to work in lower budget features and television including an underwhelming TV version of Sweet Bird of Youth, the small screen biblical epic Samson and Delilah, and an episode of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones apart his biggest budget jobbing assignment The Witches, a segment of the portmanteau Aria, his attempted return to form in Cold Heaven and the fascinating but underseen Two Deaths. He would not direct another feature until 2007 with the Fay Weldon adaptation Puffball: The Devil's Eyeball which would unfortunately be his last film. From a screenplay by Dan Gurskis, the Showtime project Full Body Massage came at a time when softcore cinema was again in vogue on the screen as "erotic thrillers" and on television with the likes of Red Shoe Diaries. With Rogers naked for most of the running time amidst sleek, modern chrome and glass, Brown romping around in sun-scorched, soft focus flashbacks with Alice (Oscar's Elizabeth Barondes) – who introduced him to both massage and Hopi spirituality – and DTV erotica star Gabriella Hall (Jacqueline Hyde) from the neck down representing a younger Nina – Full Body Massage seems to have been a compromise to "meet the brief" while allowing Roeg to play with the association of the senses and memory and giving the two stars an almost theatrical showcase. While neither of the two character ever physically "cross the line" from professional intimacy into the personal, they are both "reaching" for something in their interaction, using each other in a manner that is hard to describe so ignobly as even a figurative prostitution despite the historical associations between massage and sex discussed by both of them early on. Through touch, Fitch is privately reminded of his defining relationship with Alice while Nina is reminded only of Douglas through familiar touches and relaxes in those moments early on, spilling out anecdotes and observations that transition from venting to a spirited debate with Fitch as both attempt to defend their lifestyles from each other's judgment that the other is indeed the "lost" one. Nina's recollections of her ex-husbands, lovers – primarily starving Harry (Striking Distance's Gareth Williams) artist who from the start realizes that his art and her art are not the same thing no matter how much she wants to "exhibit" him – and family seem to have no tactile association with Douglas or Fitch, nor do Fitch's memories of his family or the less idyllic parts of his relationship with Alice. They are those private memories that nag and almost contradict the way each of them present themselves outwardly to one another (more so than now, Fitch's embracing of Hopi spirituality more so than Nina's materialism might seem more like appropriation in an attempt to fill a sense of emptiness). The two spiritually or psychologically fulfill each other, but the ending leaves it open whether further encounters will be truly healing or simply temporarily assuaging a sense of emptiness.  While Roeg's associative cutting sometimes surprises – particularly cuts to Burgard's Douglas who seems less carnal and mercenary each time he is shown as if Nina's perspective of him is softening or being clouded by Fitch's remarks about him – some of the flashbacks later in the film feel more mechanic with the seeming necessity to illustrate what might be better conveyed purely through dialogue and offer a definitive climax to Fitch's internal story, and the ending almost feels Red Shoe Diaries-style like the possibly setup for another softcore series featuring Brown's nomadic masseur and various women. The cinematography of Roeg regular Anthony B. Richmond (The Man Who Fell to Earth) has always been suited to the picture; and here, it has a naturalistic, sterile "television" feel that works best when focused on the actors and less so with the flashbacks and cutaways. The scoring of Harry Gregson-Williams (Man on Fire) feels more generic, taking the form of cocktail piano which turns out to be diegetic music, and more acoustic accompaniment for Fitch's memories. The film's title and the interstitial use of onscreen quotations regarding massage and Eastern philosophies also cannot help but draw unfortunate associations with the various "full body massage" excuses for softcore erotica coming from the video lines of Playboy and Penthouse at the time. Full Body Massage is a distinctive film in Roeg's oeuvre, yet one cannot help but wonder how much more psychological confrontational (and sexually-explicit given Roeg's employment of sex and nudity in his past works) the film might have been had it been a theatrical project from a decade or so earlier.
Video
Previously released in the United States on VHS by Paramount, Full Body Massage has only been available on DVD overseas from the nineties video master. Unearthed Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 main presentation comes from a new 2K scan that has a cooler, more balanced look compared to the 720p MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 open-matte "TV version" presentation also included on the disc. While the warmer look of the TV version is what we have come to know for such nineties TV movies – particularly those of an erotic bent – the 1080p presentation's cooler look is not distracting, making Rogers look less flushed and Brown's tan less orange. The fact that this version is not just an open-matte presentation of the main 2K scan suggests that the rights holders were the ones who chose the 1.66:1 framing and did not provide the full scan to Unearthed Films (the 1.66:1 framing for the "theatrical version" is not without precedence since the pilot movie for Red Shoe Diaries shown overseas as "Wild Orchid 3" was presented on European DVD in the 1.66:1 ratio, although that turned out to reveal more information on the sides than the domestic fullscreen transfer whereas the theatrical version of Full Body Massage mattes away top and bottom information while revealing both presentations to be compositionally-balanced). 
Audio
Both versions feature similar English LPCM 2.0 stereo tracks with an emphasis on dialogue – the difference between the set recording and voiceovers is occasionally noticeable – while the sound design is mostly sedate and the scoring supportive. Optional English and English SDH subtitles are provided for both presentations. 
Extras
Apart from the aforementioned TV version, the only other extras are a trailer (1:26) – presumably a promotional piece for overseas advertising – and trailers for two other "Unearthed Classics" titles. 
Overall
Full Body Massage is a distinctive film in Roeg's oeuvre, yet one cannot help but wonder how much more psychological confrontational (and sexually-explicit given Roeg's employment of sex and nudity in his past works) the film might have been had it been a theatrical project from a decade or so earlier.
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