This is actually a philosophical film. Just like George Bataille’s erotic novels, sex is only a form of expression, behind which is a search for individual subjectivity.
Joe is the most obscure character in the whole movie, and the other women have symbolic colors. River, a symbol of instability, is also Joe's vague self, a disappearing subjectivity, constantly seeking, constantly making love, and constant indulgence. And the woman is only a reflection to Joe, but his own vague nature makes the women he faces become objects, mirrors or objects of erotic venting, how can he ask him to give to others when he is not clear about himself A clear location? This is also the tragedy of women. Their subjectivity in society is completely useless in front of Joe. If we try to transform this lust into a realistic order or convention (such as marriage), just like preaching to Adam in the Garden of Eden Can only hit a wall. Joe will only continue to have sex with every woman he meets.
But what can we condemn in front of naked and primitive lust? In the face of instinct, all moral or legal trials have lost their footing. What if Joe finally stood up to testify? Maybe he will be the second Merso (a stranger), because there is no such vague and uneasy position in front of the secular precepts. You must become a subject, otherwise you can only wait for the outside trial (the plumber sentenced to death is but It's Joe's substitute). Joe's nature saves him from trial, but what he will face is his own torture, the pull of morality and instinct. There was no solution until the end. Joe threw away the mirror that Cathie gave him, and threw away his own reflection. There was no place and no form.
The young Adam, the wandering Adam, the Adam without form, a woman was made from his flesh and blood, he had intercourse with a woman, he also knew himself from the woman, and produced his own sin. The woman in the film is at the same time Joe's connection with the outside world as a marginal figure (the moral constraint prompted him to write that letter). This kind of adhesion makes him feel guilty, and this is something he doesn't have instinctively.
This also raises a question for us. Is the subjectivity that we embodied in society really ourselves? When we betray, when we cross the boundary, the regulated relationship becomes invalid in our behavior, and our subjectivity is lost as a result, but isn't this our own? In this kind of transgression between the two sides, if we want to introduce subjectivity in reverse, the transgression is also no longer valid. And if one of the parties rejects such intervention, this relationship will be over.
(After all, it is a film co-produced by Britain and France, full of French philosophy.
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